Underworld Evolution
by Superles
Summary: Sequel to my 2011 Underworld/Spashley story. Please R
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

The very memory of that night was like a recurring nightmare….

The fog was cold and damp, and an icy wind blew through the shadow-cloaked forest, but Ashley barely noticed the chill. Autumn trees, bare and skeletal, clawed at her as she ran frantically through the woods outside her home. Her heart pounded so loudly she felt certain it would burst. Glancing back over her shoulder, she glimpsed vague, indistinct figures moving through the mist behind her. A full moon shone through the barren tree branches overhead. Storm clouds drifted across the moon like a veil.

They were chasing her. Whatever they were.

Only nineteen years old, Ashley knew she was soon to die.

Heart-rending screams ripped through the night, sending fresh jolts of fear and anguish through the young woman's soul. Her dark brown hair streamed wildly behind her. Panic filled her wide chestnut eyes. Undried tears streaked her cheeks. A thin linen nightgown provided scant protection from the cold. Spilled blood streaked her gown, glistening wetly in the moonlight. The sticky red fluid had soaked through the fabric, causing the linen to cling to her skin. Bare feet raced over a carpet of fallen leaves.

Thunder boomed above her. A jagged bolt of lightning sliced the sky in twain. Rain poured down in sheets, drenching Ashley. The forest floor turned to mud beneath her feet. Muck oozed between her toes and she had to fight to keep her balance on the slippery leaves. If she fell, her pursuers would be on her in an instant. Chances were, she would never rise again.

Who are they? She wondered. What are they?

More screams penetrated the darkness. The blood-chilling ululations came not from human throats. Something is in the stables, she realized. The horses sounded as though they were being torn to pieces, which might well be the case. Ashley had already witnessed far worse this evening.

The blood upon her gown was not her own, but it could not have been any more precious to her before it had gushed from the severed throats of her mother, sister, and baby nieces. She had left the butchered bodies of her nearest and dearest strewn upon the wooden floor of their violated home when she had fled madly into the night, seeking out the only family left to her.

Father. She thought desperately. He had gone out to calm the horses only moments before the mysterious invaders had attacked their home. Please, God, let him live still. Do not leave me alone with these… creatures!

The stables loomed before her, barely visible in the mist and gloom. As she drew nearer the large wooden structure, she saw that the barn door was open wide. Had her father drawn back the door while checking on the horses, or had the monsters already invaded the stables as well? Utter blackness shrouded the interior of the stable, offering no clue as to what might lurk within, but she could hear the frightened horses whinnying in alarm. The poor animals sounded absolutely terrified.

Dare she enter the stables alone? Glancing once more over her shoulder at the hellish shapes surging through the fog, she realized she had no other choice. The sturdy building was her only hope for sanctuary, no matter how meager.

Trusting her life to fate, she dashed through the doorway into the stables. A timber roof provided welcome relief from the pouring rain. Flashes of lightning and sporadic moonbeams filtered through the roof to provide some slight degree of illumination. Crazed horses bucked violently in their stalls, terrified by the storm and God only knew what else. Their hooves pounded against the solid oak doors trapping them in their stalls. They had worked themselves into a lather, the sweat gleaming on their quivering bodies.

Ashley could not spare a second to see to the horses. Before her pursuers could catch up with her, she slammed the door shut and bolted it in place. She prayed that the heavy oaken barrier would keep out the bloodthirsty monsters behind her, but feared that no power on earth could truly save her. It was as though Death itself had come lunging out of the fog this night, to strike down her loved ones one by one.

Breathing hard, she turned away from the door. Water streamed from her hair and gown. The dank air reeked of wet hay, dung, horse sweat, and blood. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darker gloom of the sealed barn, and she staggered forward uncertainly. Another flash of lightning pierced the darkness, revealing a supine figure lying motionless upon the hay-strewn floor between the stalls. The sprawled body was as still and silent as the grave.

No! Ashley thought. An icy certainty spread through her veins, and she felt her last vestige of hope succumb to despair. She stumbled toward the lifeless form, already knowing what she would find. Her brown eyes brimmed with tears.

"Father…"

The face of the corpse was contorted with fear, but Ashley could not fail to recognize the kindly, bearded visage that had so often looked upon her with warmth and affection. Her father's throat had been torn open, as though by a rabid animal. Bright red blood was splattered all over him, just as it had been on the savaged bodies back at their house. His limbs were twisted and askew. Broken shards of bone jutted from his fractured arms and legs. Glassy eyes stared blankly into oblivion.

Her father was dead—just like the rest of her family.

She was alone.

Why us? She thought in agony. What did we ever do to deserve this? She dropped to her knees beside the body, heedless of the blood spreading out from beneath her father's gory remains. My father was a good man. A decent man. Violent sobs rocked her body. Tears fell upon the dead metalsmith's face.

A deafening crash jolted her from her grief. She spun around toward the barn door, which shivered beneath the force of powerful blows. A battering ram? She thought in confusion as the oak door was smashed to splinters. It crashed to the floor with a resounding thud that echoed loudly throughout the stables.

Ashley turned away from the door, back toward her father. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Although Death had surely come for her, she had no desire to look it in the face. Trembling, she awaited the fatal blow that would sever her soul from her body. She could only pray that her end would be swift.

Soon, she promised herself, I will be reunited with my family in paradise.

Footsteps trod heavily on the blood-soaked floor of the stables. The horses reared up within their stalls, positively maddened with fear. Ashley heard the footsteps approach her at a measured pace. She braced herself for the searing pain of razor-sharp fangs or claws sinking into her flesh. She imagined her own blood spouting from her throat.

Instead a steady hand fell firmly yet gently upon her shoulder. She held her breath, expecting the hand to move to her throat, but it remained where it was, as though to comfort her. Puzzled, she opened her eyes and looked behind her.

No monster stood above her. No pillaging berserker. The hand belonged to a regal stranger clad in magnificent black plate armor. An ornate black helmet, of Corinthian design, offered only a glimpse of the man's pale features, but could not conceal the stranger's almost palpable aura of strength and authority. A massive broadsword, so large that it seemed a marvel that any mortal man could lift it, hung at his side. Compassion shone in his luminous blue eyes.

"They've gone," Raife said.

Can this be true? Ashley wondered. Am I truly saved? She eyed the armored warrior warily, torn between suspicion and an urgent desire to accept the comfort she so desperately needed. Her entire world had been torn away from her. What will become of me now?

Raife reached down and gently helped her to her feet. Her legs were unsteady, and she would have fallen, save that he took her in his arms the same way her father had. She rested her weight against his, unable to run or fight back any longer. His strong arms held her up and she surrendered to his sheltering embrace. For the first time since this nightmare had begun, she felt safe and protected. "All is well, child," he said. "You need fear no longer. The beasts that slew your family have been driven away."

Praise the saints! Ashley thought. An overwhelming sense of relief washed over her.

Closing her eyes once more, Ashley failed to see her rescuer slyly wipe the blood from his lips. A stray beam of moonlight caught the gleam of Raife's pointed fangs.

Nor did Ashley see another figure emerge from the murky depths of the barn, not far from her father's body. Soren was likewise clad in black armor. His azure eyes glowed eerily in the darkness. Fresh blood glistened upon his ivory fangs and bushy black beard.

Her father's blood.

A second vampire crept from the blackness. Aiden's handsome face was flushed with stolen blood. A mane of shoulder-length black hair framed a clean-shaven, aristocratic countenance. Cruel blue eyes ravished Ashley's trembling form. He leered at her in lustful anticipation.

Moving as silently as shadows, the two predators stalked toward Ashley, awaiting only Raife's command to fall upon the unsuspecting mortal maiden. Her back to them, her tearstained face resting against Raife's armored shoulder, she had no idea that she was still in mortal danger. Soren thirsted for her blood. Aiden was more interested in her tender young flesh.

But Raife raised his hand to ward them off. Gently stroking Ashley's wet hair, he quietly signaled them to back away. A look of bitter disappointment crossed Aiden's face, but he knew better than to defy his master. With Soren, he furtively receded back into the shadows.

Ashley never even knew they were there.

"There, there, child," Raife cooed in her ear. "You're not alone anymore. You shall never be alone again…."

Thunder pealed in the night.


	2. Chapter One

_Chapter Two_

Hours had passed in the silent crypt. A trickle of blood pooled atop a polished bronze disk bearing an elegantly engraved letter _A._

For Arthur.

Crimson rivulets seeped through the edges of the burnished hatch, slithering downward into the buried sarcophagus, where the last surviving Elder hung upside down in his tomb, like a slumbering vampire bat. For over two hundred years he had hung thus, hibernating deep beneath the earth while his fellow Elders took their turns ruling over the coven. One above, two below… that had been the way of things ever since he and Raife and Christine had agreed to the eternal cycle of the Chain. Undisturbed within his sarcophagus, Arthur had no way of knowing that both Raife and Christine had perished this night.

Two centuries of fasting had taken its toll on the Elder's appearance. Dry, blackened skin was stretched tightly over his emaciated frame, so that he resembled a mummy more than a vampire. His once-handsome face had shriveled into a grimacing, skull-like visage. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut at the bottom of sunken, black sockets. Yellowed fangs were locked together in a frozen scowl. Only a few thin strands of hair still clung to his desiccated scalp. His rib cage showed through the papery skin covering his chest. By all indications, the Elder's withered form looked dead beyond all hope of resurrection.

But then the first few drops of blood fell upon his parched lips. More blood trickled down his body into his waiting mouth, bringing renewed life to the skeletal creature. A quiescent heart, shrunken to the size of a walnut, began to pulsate once more, faintly at first, but with increasing strength. Atrophied lungs whistled as they sucked in the dank, stagnant air of the tomb.

_What is this?_ Arthur thought dimly, as his consciousness began to emerge from centuries of darksome slumber. _Has the time come again for my Awakening?_

Perhaps, but this Awakening felt very different from those in the past. A peculiar sensation seemed to spread throughout his body, propelled by the very beating of his heart. Within his veins, lycan blood mixed with his own, merging in an unexpected alchemical reaction. He felt a change come over him, a fundamental transformation in his very nature. Power such as he had never known surged through his veins.

His eyes snapped open, revealing a pair of jet-black orbs.

Hybrid eyes.

_**A.D. 1202**_

The village lay in ruins. Flames licked the thatch roofs of peasant hovels. Smoke rose from the charred remains of shops and wagons. Prodigious amounts of blood had been splashed upon the snow-covered streets and market square. The wasted blood glistened beneath the light of a full moon, turning the once-white snow into gory slush. The tantalizing smell of so much blood made the vampire's mouth water, despite the dire matters weighing on his mind.

_Oh, my brother,_ Arthur Corvinus thought mournfully. _What have you done?_

Bodies were strewn everywhere. Men, women, children… their throats ripped out as though by a savage beast. Entrails spilled from corpses that had been sliced open by powerful claws. Many of the villagers were still in their nightclothes, death having come for them while the tiny hamlet slept. Their lifeless faces were frozen in expressions of utter shock and horror. Despite abundant evidence of an animal attack, too much flesh remained upon their bones for the townspeople to have been killed for food. Instead they had been slaughtered for sport.

The isolated village was located in a shallow valley surrounded by dense woodlands. Snowcapped pines and firs bore mute witness to the grisly scene, while an eerie silence reigned over the valley. There were no whimpers of pain, no desperate cries for succor. No sobbing kinsmen mourned their dead. Arthur heard only the crackling of the flames and the crash of collapsing timbers.

The funereal silence spoke volumes. There were no survivors.

_We are too late,_ Arthur thought.

"Yet again," Raife said, "we arrive to witness his aftermath. But the onslaught ends tonight."

"We must move quickly," Christine reminded him. "Or we will be overwhelmed."

The three Elders surveyed the slaughtered village from atop a slope overlooking the valley. They sat astride their armored warhorses, their faces grave behind their crested helmets. Like their steeds, they were clad in fearsome black plate armor. Intricate runes adorned the finely made armor, which gleamed like polished ebony in the moonlight. Conversing atop their coal-black mounts, they resembled three-quarters of the Four Horsemen, arriving belatedly in the wake of the missing horseman: Death himself.

A company of armored Death Dealers accompanied the Elders. Their weapons drawn, the vampire warriors awaited the Elders' commands. Azure eyes glowed beneath the flickering light of their upraised torches. The pungent smell of the blood had the soldiers all on edge. They bared their fangs. They licked their lips.

The vampires had not yet fed tonight. This massacre was not their doing.

Raife turned to Arthur. "Is he still here?"

Arthur nodded reluctantly. His youthful appearance, evident even through his Corinthian-style helmet, belied his true age and immortality. His brown hair held not a trace of gray. Indeed, he looked several decades younger than Raife, even though he was actually the older of the two.

"Raife, he must not be harmed."

"I gave you my word, did I not?" Raife turned his horse around to address their troops. He raised his voice. "Burn the bodies. Search the outbuildings."

The Death Dealers rode forward, spreading out into the ruined village. Their torches added to the glow of the burning carts and buildings. Arthur spurred his own horse onward, anxious to join in the search.

"Arthur!" Raife called out sharply.

_What is it?_ Arthur wondered. He pulled back on the reins. Steam blasted from the nostrils of his impatient steed. He looked back at Raife.

"Stay with me," his fellow Elder instructed.

For a moment, Arthur considered disregarding Raife's request. They were equals, after all, even though he and Christine tended to defer to Raife on military matters. The other Elder had been an experienced general and warlord even before he'd become immortal. Arthur gazed intently at the burning village before reluctantly turning around his horse and rejoining Raife and Christine. He had no wish to provoke Raife unless it was absolutely necessary.

_I may need his goodwill before this terrible night is over,_ Arthur thought. _For my brother's sake._

The rustic hamlet reminded Istvan of the small Wallachian village in which he had grown up, before he had been granted the boon of immortality and recruited into the service of the Elders. He seldom thought of his mortal days anymore, but the familiar setting stirred long-dormant memories. A cold rage flared within him. These butchered villagers might well have been his own family and neighbors, a couple of mortal lifetimes ago. Lowly and short-lived as they were, they had deserved better than this.

_This atrocity cannot go unpunished,_ he thought vengefully. _The Beast must pay._

With his fellow Death Dealers, he dismounted from his horse and stalked the narrow streets. Bloodstained snow muffled the tread of their heavy iron boots. Flaming torches set fire to gutted corpses, creating grisly bonfires throughout the streets and square. The nauseating aroma of burning flesh joined the smoky smell of the doomed buildings. Istvan's gorge rose.

But it was not enough to merely torch the bodies lying outdoors. Istvan knew they could not afford to leave a single ravaged corpse unburned. They had to search the shops and homes as well—or suffer the consequences.

_We don't need another disaster like last time. We've lost too many men already…._

A peasant cottage caught his eye, and he gestured to one of his comrades, a Death Dealer named Radu. Istvan had lost his own torch in their breakneck ride to the village, but Radu still had a serviceable brand. The other vampire nodded and they approached the cottage together. A wooden door creaked on its hinges as Istvan kicked it open. Leading with their swords, the two men entered the hovel through a haze of smoke and shadow. Vampiric eyes penetrated the murk, seeing the humble furnishings one would expect to see in such a lowly domicile: wooden stools, a low table, a few straw pallets for beds, and a hearth in the center of the hut, safely distant from the crude wattle-and-daub walls. Dying coals glowed within the hearth.

A mauled corpse lay sprawled upon the packed-earth floor. The body belonged to a full-grown man clad in the torn remains of a linen nightshirt. His face and torso had been shredded by gargantuan claws. Exposed ribs jutted from his open chest. Gobbets of bloody meat still clung to the splintered bones, which were scored by deep claw marks. The man's heart and guts were missing, no doubt vanished down the Beast's gullet. Istvan wondered briefly what had become of the man's wife and children. Were their bodies among the corpses burning in the streets?

He turned toward Radu. "Give me the torch."

The sooner this disgusting chore was concluded, the better. Then they could move on to the more important task of tracking down the loathsome animal responsible for the carnage.

_He shall not escape us again,_ the Death Dealer vowed.

Radu handed him the burning brand. Istvan turned back toward the corpse.

Before he could ignite the lifeless carcass, however, a bestial roar erupted from the dead man's throat. The "corpse" sprang to its feet, already in the throes of a grotesque transformation. Glassy mortal eyes turned into feral cobalt orbs. A canine snout protruded from the scarred face, which appeared to be healing itself with preternatural speed. Jagged fangs flashed within the creature's open jaws. A new heart began to form within the sundered chest cavity. Fresh entrails, writhing like overgrown worms, blossomed beneath the heart, which beat with unnatural life. A hairy hide swiftly spread over the creature's torso, hiding the pulsating organs from view. Human nails sharpened into vicious-looking talons. Thick, black bristles sprouted from his face and skin.

_Hellfire!_ Istvan cursed silently. He backed away, almost bumping into Radu. _We're too late!_

Still wearing the remnants of his shredded nightshirt, the newborn lycanthrope snarled like a rabid dog. His savage gaze swept the cramped interior of the cottage, searching for a way out. The two Death Dealers stood between him and the front door, so his crazed eyes turned rapidly toward the rear of the chamber. Before the startled vampires could recover from their shock, the man-beast slammed into the back door, knocking it off its hinges with a single lunge. The door hit the ground with a tremendous crash, and the lycan scrambled out of the murky cottage into the moonlight.

_Blast it!_ Istvan thought as the creature escaped. Still holding his useless torch, he knew he had to warn the others. He shouted at the top of his lungs:

"_They're turning!"_

The frantic cry sent a jolt through every vampire within earshot. Christine sat upright in her saddle and saw her brother Elders do the same. The small complement of Death Dealers who had remained behind to guard the Elders tensed up within their armor. They raised their swords high in readiness for the battle to come. Christine heard muttered curses among the soldiers.

_It's begun,_ she realized.

Resting her hand upon the stock of her crossbow, she scanned the village for any sign of the enemy. Exquisite blue eyes spotted a misshapen figure racing into a darkened alley between two crude peasant hovels. The creature looked to be half-transformed already.

She was not the only one to spy the wretched beast. "There!" hollered one of her foot soldiers. He pointed one finger of a metal gauntlet at the same alley.

Christine required no further prompting. In a blur of motion, she drew her crossbow and took aim at the fleeing lycan. A silver-tipped bolt sprang from the loaded weapon, slicing through the smoky air and striking its brutish target in the arm. The lycan howled in pain and glared back at the vampires. Little of humanity remained in his monstrous features. Cobalt eyes peered out from beneath a sloping brow. Tufted ears tapered to a point. A fleshy black muzzle grimaced. Wincing in pain, the creature ducked into the waiting alley. Desperate to escape the Death Dealers, he paid little heed to the smoldering corpse lying in the snow outside the alley.

"After him!" Christine commanded. Although born female, she had never been one to shrink from battle. To her mind, immortality was too short to waste it cloistered away like some helpless mortal damsel. She spurred her horse down the snowy slope into the nameless village. A pair of mounted Death Dealers rode after her. "Let him not escape!"

In their haste to catch up with their quarry, the vampires also ignored the charred and smoking corpse upon the ground. The armored chargers galloped past the dead peasant, barely missing the body with their hooves. None saw the corpse's eyes peel open, exposing bestial cobalt orbs. No one witnessed the still and lifeless body start to convulse violently. Bones cracked and twisted loudly as the murdered villager came back to life, caught in the grip of an excruciating metamorphosis. A tortured groan escaped the lycan's contorted jaws, but the pain-wracked utterance went unheard.

By now, Christine and her men had followed the first lycan into the alley. She drew back on the reins, slowing her horse, while she searched the narrow passage for their prey. The stock of her crossbow rested against the burnished metal protecting her cheek. At first, she could discern no trace of the creature, but then she spotted the monster's shadow upon a moonlit wall deeper within the alley. Silhouetted against the crude stone wall, the shadow depicted the final stages of the unfortunate villager's transformation.

The Change was accelerating at a phenomenal rate. The shadow expanded in size as the lycan gained weight and stature by the second. The frenzied lycan tore at his clothing, stripping himself of any last vestige of civilization. His limbs stretched from their sockets, as though he were being tortured upon the rack. A human scream devolved into an anguished howl.

_Poor thing,_ Christine thought. She felt a moment of pity for the ill-fated villager, who had surely not asked for such a ghastly fate. Compassion would not stay her hand, however. It was too late for the lycan now. Like the rest of his abhorrent kind, he needed to be put down like a rabid dog. _Death is the only mercy I can offer._

She used the shadow to gauge the lycan's position. Judging from the angle of the moonlight, the creature was directly ahead, farther down the alley. She led the Death Dealers forward—and found herself face-to-face with their brutish prey.

The transformation was complete. A full-fledged werewolf now stood revealed at the far end of the alley. Standing erect upon his hind legs, the towering beast was over seven feet tall. Coarse black fur covered his naked body. Foam dripped from his gaping jaws. Maddened by the Change, he growled at the mounted vampires, exposing a mouthful of serrated fangs. He slashed madly at the air with claws the size of daggers. His hot, fetid breath misted in the cold night air.

A stone wall blocked the end of the alley, leaving the werewolf cornered. His lips peeled back from his incisors as he roared at the hunters defiantly. He lunged at Christine, his claws outstretched before him.

The beast was fast, but her crossbow was faster still. A speeding bolt struck the werewolf in midair, lodging deep within his shaggy chest. Two more bolts found their marks as Christine's men fired their own crossbows at the beast. The silver tips pierced the werewolf's heart and he dropped like a stone onto the muddy floor of the alley. Silver was poison to his noxious breed. A vile ichor, infected with the lycan taint, oozed from the werewolf's wounds. This time he would not rise again. His transformed body retained its bestial aspect. Not even death could restore his humanity.

_Another pitiful cur disposed of,_ she thought approvingly. She removed her stifling helmet and savored the invigorating bite of the wind upon her face. Lustrous black hair, now soaked with sweat, was plastered to an elegant visage worthy of a Grecian goddess. _By the dark gods, I grow weary of this butchery._

Shouts, screams, and fierce howls invaded the alley from all directions. Her charger reared up in alarm. Clearly, the other Death Dealers were engaged in similar confrontations throughout the village. Christine recalled the multitude of bodies the original beast had left behind and knew that every one of those bodies now represented a potential menace. For all she knew, she and the other vampires were already outnumbered.

_Not again,_ she thought. _Must we fight this same struggle over and over?_

She turned her horse about, intent on joining the battle outside the alley. She thrust another quarrel into her crossbow. The first of her Death Dealers galloped out of the alley ahead of her, while the second rode up behind her. "Make haste!" she urged them both. "Our comrades require our—"

The crash of shattered wood and plaster drowned out her voice as, without warning, another werewolf smashed through the crumbling wall of the hut on her left. The noisome beast slammed into one of the mounted Death Dealers, knocking both man and steed to the ground. Metal armor thudded against the ground and the frightened horse whinnied in panic. Wolfen claws slashed at the charger's exposed underside. Blood sprayed from deep gashes in the quivering horseflesh. The destrier's rider found himself trapped beneath the weight of his own steed. He struggled to extricate himself, shoving at the armored horse with both hands. His crossbow lay uselessly upon the snow, out of his reach. The werewolf snapped at him with hungry jaws.

"Help me!" he cried. "For mercy's sake!"

Christine's own horse reared up in alarm and she had to fight to regain control of the terrified animal. She almost dropped her own crossbow, but managed to hold on to the reins and weapon both. The first rider, already gone from the alley, frantically yanked his horse around, but was too far away to do any good.

Drawn by the clamor, a vampire foot soldier came running into the alley. He charged at the werewolf from behind, swinging a silver-edged battle-axe. The axe sank deep into the monster's shaggy back, cleaving its spine. The werewolf died instantly, collapsing against the bleeding body of the downed horse. The trapped Death Dealer let out a gasp of relief. His rescuer wrested his axe from the creature's body.

_Well done,_ Christine thought. Looking more closely, she recognized the axe-wielding warrior as Drago, a once-mortal soldier who had only recently been initiated into the coven. As far as she was concerned, his courageous actions had proven him more than worthy of the great blessing that had been bestowed upon him._I must commend him to his superiors later, should he survive this._

She opened her mouth to praise the soldier, only to be interrupted by a ferocious roar. A hideous figure, engulfed in red-hot flames, rose up behind Drago. Christine vaguely recognized the blazing corpse that, only minutes ago, had lain outside the alley. The resurrected visitor was still caught in the throes of his dreadful transformation, so that it was hard to say what tormented him most, the awful agonies of the Change or the searing flames racing over his body. His limbs jerked spasmodically as he snarled and gnashed his jagged teeth. The smell of burning flesh and fur assailed Christine's nostrils.

_Time to put this wretched thing out of his misery._

She raised her crossbow, but there was no need; Drago wheeled about and swung his bloody axe at the flaming lycan. The silver edge of the axe sliced cleanly through the werewolf's neck. Trailing a shower of sparks, the monster's head went flying from his shoulders. The werewolf's blazing skull rebounded off a nearby wall, while the headless body dropped to the ground. Blood gushed from its bisected throat. The werewolf's limbs twitched convulsively.

Drago had little time to savor his victory. With a savage roar, a third werewolf pounced from the roof of a smoldering cottage. The beast tackled Drago, knocking the startled Death Dealer to the ground. He landed hard amidst the bloody slush, with the berserk werewolf right on top of him. The impact drove the breath from Drago's lungs. His mighty battle-axe slipped from his fingers.

"Drago!" Christine cried out. Her finger hesitated upon the trigger of her crossbow. The Death Dealer and his subhuman attacker were so close together that she feared she might hit Drago instead. Her horse backed away from the thrashing figures. She peered anxiously down the stock of the crossbow, waiting for a clear shot.

But the maniacal werewolf never gave her a chance. A voracious maw closed on Drago's face, crushing it between two powerful jaws. Bone crunched loudly. A geyser of cold vampire blood exploded over the werewolf's snout and furry pelt.

_No!_ Christine thought, shocked by Drago's sudden demise. The death of mortals was bad enough, but the death of yet another immortal…! The valiant young Death Dealer might well have lived for centuries if not for the werewolf's mindless savagery, yet he had been cut down as readily as any short-lived human. _What an appalling waste!_

What pity she had for the transformed villager vanished in an instant. An icy fury raced through her veins. Her finger squeezed tightly on the trigger.

A silver-tipped bolt avenged Drago's murder.

But there were still many more beasts to slay… including the foul originator of this obscene contagion.

_One way or another,_ she vowed, _this plague ends tonight._


	3. Chapter Two

_Chapter Two_

Hours had passed in the silent crypt. A trickle of blood pooled atop a polished bronze disk bearing an elegantly engraved letter _A._

For Arthur.

Crimson rivulets seeped through the edges of the burnished hatch, slithering downward into the buried sarcophagus, where the last surviving Elder hung upside down in his tomb, like a slumbering vampire bat. For over two hundred years he had hung thus, hibernating deep beneath the earth while his fellow Elders took their turns ruling over the coven. One above, two below… that had been the way of things ever since he and Raife and Christine had agreed to the eternal cycle of the Chain. Undisturbed within his sarcophagus, Arthur had no way of knowing that both Raife and Christine had perished this night.

Two centuries of fasting had taken its toll on the Elder's appearance. Dry, blackened skin was stretched tightly over his emaciated frame, so that he resembled a mummy more than a vampire. His once-handsome face had shriveled into a grimacing, skull-like visage. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut at the bottom of sunken, black sockets. Yellowed fangs were locked together in a frozen scowl. Only a few thin strands of hair still clung to his desiccated scalp. His rib cage showed through the papery skin covering his chest. By all indications, the Elder's withered form looked dead beyond all hope of resurrection.

But then the first few drops of blood fell upon his parched lips. More blood trickled down his body into his waiting mouth, bringing renewed life to the skeletal creature. A quiescent heart, shrunken to the size of a walnut, began to pulsate once more, faintly at first, but with increasing strength. Atrophied lungs whistled as they sucked in the dank, stagnant air of the tomb.

_What is this?_ Arthur thought dimly, as his consciousness began to emerge from centuries of darksome slumber. _Has the time come again for my Awakening?_

Perhaps, but this Awakening felt very different from those in the past. A peculiar sensation seemed to spread throughout his body, propelled by the very beating of his heart. Within his veins, lycan blood mixed with his own, merging in an unexpected alchemical reaction. He felt a change come over him, a fundamental transformation in his very nature. Power such as he had never known surged through his veins.

His eyes snapped open, revealing a pair of jet-black orbs.

Hybrid eyes.

_**A.D. 1202**_

The village lay in ruins. Flames licked the thatch roofs of peasant hovels. Smoke rose from the charred remains of shops and wagons. Prodigious amounts of blood had been splashed upon the snow-covered streets and market square. The wasted blood glistened beneath the light of a full moon, turning the once-white snow into gory slush. The tantalizing smell of so much blood made the vampire's mouth water, despite the dire matters weighing on his mind.

_Oh, my brother,_ Arthur Corvinus thought mournfully. _What have you done?_

Bodies were strewn everywhere. Men, women, children… their throats ripped out as though by a savage beast. Entrails spilled from corpses that had been sliced open by powerful claws. Many of the villagers were still in their nightclothes, death having come for them while the tiny hamlet slept. Their lifeless faces were frozen in expressions of utter shock and horror. Despite abundant evidence of an animal attack, too much flesh remained upon their bones for the townspeople to have been killed for food. Instead they had been slaughtered for sport.

The isolated village was located in a shallow valley surrounded by dense woodlands. Snowcapped pines and firs bore mute witness to the grisly scene, while an eerie silence reigned over the valley. There were no whimpers of pain, no desperate cries for succor. No sobbing kinsmen mourned their dead. Arthur heard only the crackling of the flames and the crash of collapsing timbers.

The funereal silence spoke volumes. There were no survivors.

_We are too late,_ Arthur thought.

"Yet again," Raife said, "we arrive to witness his aftermath. But the onslaught ends tonight."

"We must move quickly," Christine reminded him. "Or we will be overwhelmed."

The three Elders surveyed the slaughtered village from atop a slope overlooking the valley. They sat astride their armored warhorses, their faces grave behind their crested helmets. Like their steeds, they were clad in fearsome black plate armor. Intricate runes adorned the finely made armor, which gleamed like polished ebony in the moonlight. Conversing atop their coal-black mounts, they resembled three-quarters of the Four Horsemen, arriving belatedly in the wake of the missing horseman: Death himself.

A company of armored Death Dealers accompanied the Elders. Their weapons drawn, the vampire warriors awaited the Elders' commands. Azure eyes glowed beneath the flickering light of their upraised torches. The pungent smell of the blood had the soldiers all on edge. They bared their fangs. They licked their lips.

The vampires had not yet fed tonight. This massacre was not their doing.

Raife turned to Arthur. "Is he still here?"

Arthur nodded reluctantly. His youthful appearance, evident even through his Corinthian-style helmet, belied his true age and immortality. His brown hair held not a trace of gray. Indeed, he looked several decades younger than Raife, even though he was actually the older of the two.

"Raife, he must not be harmed."

"I gave you my word, did I not?" Raife turned his horse around to address their troops. He raised his voice. "Burn the bodies. Search the outbuildings."

The Death Dealers rode forward, spreading out into the ruined village. Their torches added to the glow of the burning carts and buildings. Arthur spurred his own horse onward, anxious to join in the search.

"Arthur!" Raife called out sharply.

_What is it?_ Arthur wondered. He pulled back on the reins. Steam blasted from the nostrils of his impatient steed. He looked back at Raife.

"Stay with me," his fellow Elder instructed.

For a moment, Arthur considered disregarding Raife's request. They were equals, after all, even though he and Christine tended to defer to Raife on military matters. The other Elder had been an experienced general and warlord even before he'd become immortal. Arthur gazed intently at the burning village before reluctantly turning around his horse and rejoining Raife and Christine. He had no wish to provoke Raife unless it was absolutely necessary.

_I may need his goodwill before this terrible night is over,_ Arthur thought. _For my brother's sake._

The rustic hamlet reminded Istvan of the small Wallachian village in which he had grown up, before he had been granted the boon of immortality and recruited into the service of the Elders. He seldom thought of his mortal days anymore, but the familiar setting stirred long-dormant memories. A cold rage flared within him. These butchered villagers might well have been his own family and neighbors, a couple of mortal lifetimes ago. Lowly and short-lived as they were, they had deserved better than this.

_This atrocity cannot go unpunished,_ he thought vengefully. _The Beast must pay._

With his fellow Death Dealers, he dismounted from his horse and stalked the narrow streets. Bloodstained snow muffled the tread of their heavy iron boots. Flaming torches set fire to gutted corpses, creating grisly bonfires throughout the streets and square. The nauseating aroma of burning flesh joined the smoky smell of the doomed buildings. Istvan's gorge rose.

But it was not enough to merely torch the bodies lying outdoors. Istvan knew they could not afford to leave a single ravaged corpse unburned. They had to search the shops and homes as well—or suffer the consequences.

_We don't need another disaster like last time. We've lost too many men already…._

A peasant cottage caught his eye, and he gestured to one of his comrades, a Death Dealer named Radu. Istvan had lost his own torch in their breakneck ride to the village, but Radu still had a serviceable brand. The other vampire nodded and they approached the cottage together. A wooden door creaked on its hinges as Istvan kicked it open. Leading with their swords, the two men entered the hovel through a haze of smoke and shadow. Vampiric eyes penetrated the murk, seeing the humble furnishings one would expect to see in such a lowly domicile: wooden stools, a low table, a few straw pallets for beds, and a hearth in the center of the hut, safely distant from the crude wattle-and-daub walls. Dying coals glowed within the hearth.

A mauled corpse lay sprawled upon the packed-earth floor. The body belonged to a full-grown man clad in the torn remains of a linen nightshirt. His face and torso had been shredded by gargantuan claws. Exposed ribs jutted from his open chest. Gobbets of bloody meat still clung to the splintered bones, which were scored by deep claw marks. The man's heart and guts were missing, no doubt vanished down the Beast's gullet. Istvan wondered briefly what had become of the man's wife and children. Were their bodies among the corpses burning in the streets?

He turned toward Radu. "Give me the torch."

The sooner this disgusting chore was concluded, the better. Then they could move on to the more important task of tracking down the loathsome animal responsible for the carnage.

_He shall not escape us again,_ the Death Dealer vowed.

Radu handed him the burning brand. Istvan turned back toward the corpse.

Before he could ignite the lifeless carcass, however, a bestial roar erupted from the dead man's throat. The "corpse" sprang to its feet, already in the throes of a grotesque transformation. Glassy mortal eyes turned into feral cobalt orbs. A canine snout protruded from the scarred face, which appeared to be healing itself with preternatural speed. Jagged fangs flashed within the creature's open jaws. A new heart began to form within the sundered chest cavity. Fresh entrails, writhing like overgrown worms, blossomed beneath the heart, which beat with unnatural life. A hairy hide swiftly spread over the creature's torso, hiding the pulsating organs from view. Human nails sharpened into vicious-looking talons. Thick, black bristles sprouted from his face and skin.

_Hellfire!_ Istvan cursed silently. He backed away, almost bumping into Radu. _We're too late!_

Still wearing the remnants of his shredded nightshirt, the newborn lycanthrope snarled like a rabid dog. His savage gaze swept the cramped interior of the cottage, searching for a way out. The two Death Dealers stood between him and the front door, so his crazed eyes turned rapidly toward the rear of the chamber. Before the startled vampires could recover from their shock, the man-beast slammed into the back door, knocking it off its hinges with a single lunge. The door hit the ground with a tremendous crash, and the lycan scrambled out of the murky cottage into the moonlight.

_Blast it!_ Istvan thought as the creature escaped. Still holding his useless torch, he knew he had to warn the others. He shouted at the top of his lungs:

"_They're turning!"_

The frantic cry sent a jolt through every vampire within earshot. Christine sat upright in her saddle and saw her brother Elders do the same. The small complement of Death Dealers who had remained behind to guard the Elders tensed up within their armor. They raised their swords high in readiness for the battle to come. Christine heard muttered curses among the soldiers.

_It's begun,_ she realized.

Resting her hand upon the stock of her crossbow, she scanned the village for any sign of the enemy. Exquisite blue eyes spotted a misshapen figure racing into a darkened alley between two crude peasant hovels. The creature looked to be half-transformed already.

She was not the only one to spy the wretched beast. "There!" hollered one of her foot soldiers. He pointed one finger of a metal gauntlet at the same alley.

Christine required no further prompting. In a blur of motion, she drew her crossbow and took aim at the fleeing lycan. A silver-tipped bolt sprang from the loaded weapon, slicing through the smoky air and striking its brutish target in the arm. The lycan howled in pain and glared back at the vampires. Little of humanity remained in his monstrous features. Cobalt eyes peered out from beneath a sloping brow. Tufted ears tapered to a point. A fleshy black muzzle grimaced. Wincing in pain, the creature ducked into the waiting alley. Desperate to escape the Death Dealers, he paid little heed to the smoldering corpse lying in the snow outside the alley.

"After him!" Christine commanded. Although born female, she had never been one to shrink from battle. To her mind, immortality was too short to waste it cloistered away like some helpless mortal damsel. She spurred her horse down the snowy slope into the nameless village. A pair of mounted Death Dealers rode after her. "Let him not escape!"

In their haste to catch up with their quarry, the vampires also ignored the charred and smoking corpse upon the ground. The armored chargers galloped past the dead peasant, barely missing the body with their hooves. None saw the corpse's eyes peel open, exposing bestial cobalt orbs. No one witnessed the still and lifeless body start to convulse violently. Bones cracked and twisted loudly as the murdered villager came back to life, caught in the grip of an excruciating metamorphosis. A tortured groan escaped the lycan's contorted jaws, but the pain-wracked utterance went unheard.

By now, Christine and her men had followed the first lycan into the alley. She drew back on the reins, slowing her horse, while she searched the narrow passage for their prey. The stock of her crossbow rested against the burnished metal protecting her cheek. At first, she could discern no trace of the creature, but then she spotted the monster's shadow upon a moonlit wall deeper within the alley. Silhouetted against the crude stone wall, the shadow depicted the final stages of the unfortunate villager's transformation.

The Change was accelerating at a phenomenal rate. The shadow expanded in size as the lycan gained weight and stature by the second. The frenzied lycan tore at his clothing, stripping himself of any last vestige of civilization. His limbs stretched from their sockets, as though he were being tortured upon the rack. A human scream devolved into an anguished howl.

_Poor thing,_ Christine thought. She felt a moment of pity for the ill-fated villager, who had surely not asked for such a ghastly fate. Compassion would not stay her hand, however. It was too late for the lycan now. Like the rest of his abhorrent kind, he needed to be put down like a rabid dog. _Death is the only mercy I can offer._

She used the shadow to gauge the lycan's position. Judging from the angle of the moonlight, the creature was directly ahead, farther down the alley. She led the Death Dealers forward—and found herself face-to-face with their brutish prey.

The transformation was complete. A full-fledged werewolf now stood revealed at the far end of the alley. Standing erect upon his hind legs, the towering beast was over seven feet tall. Coarse black fur covered his naked body. Foam dripped from his gaping jaws. Maddened by the Change, he growled at the mounted vampires, exposing a mouthful of serrated fangs. He slashed madly at the air with claws the size of daggers. His hot, fetid breath misted in the cold night air.

A stone wall blocked the end of the alley, leaving the werewolf cornered. His lips peeled back from his incisors as he roared at the hunters defiantly. He lunged at Christine, his claws outstretched before him.

The beast was fast, but her crossbow was faster still. A speeding bolt struck the werewolf in midair, lodging deep within his shaggy chest. Two more bolts found their marks as Christine's men fired their own crossbows at the beast. The silver tips pierced the werewolf's heart and he dropped like a stone onto the muddy floor of the alley. Silver was poison to his noxious breed. A vile ichor, infected with the lycan taint, oozed from the werewolf's wounds. This time he would not rise again. His transformed body retained its bestial aspect. Not even death could restore his humanity.

_Another pitiful cur disposed of,_ she thought approvingly. She removed her stifling helmet and savored the invigorating bite of the wind upon her face. Lustrous black hair, now soaked with sweat, was plastered to an elegant visage worthy of a Grecian goddess. _By the dark gods, I grow weary of this butchery._

Shouts, screams, and fierce howls invaded the alley from all directions. Her charger reared up in alarm. Clearly, the other Death Dealers were engaged in similar confrontations throughout the village. Christine recalled the multitude of bodies the original beast had left behind and knew that every one of those bodies now represented a potential menace. For all she knew, she and the other vampires were already outnumbered.

_Not again,_ she thought. _Must we fight this same struggle over and over?_

She turned her horse about, intent on joining the battle outside the alley. She thrust another quarrel into her crossbow. The first of her Death Dealers galloped out of the alley ahead of her, while the second rode up behind her. "Make haste!" she urged them both. "Our comrades require our—"

The crash of shattered wood and plaster drowned out her voice as, without warning, another werewolf smashed through the crumbling wall of the hut on her left. The noisome beast slammed into one of the mounted Death Dealers, knocking both man and steed to the ground. Metal armor thudded against the ground and the frightened horse whinnied in panic. Wolfen claws slashed at the charger's exposed underside. Blood sprayed from deep gashes in the quivering horseflesh. The destrier's rider found himself trapped beneath the weight of his own steed. He struggled to extricate himself, shoving at the armored horse with both hands. His crossbow lay uselessly upon the snow, out of his reach. The werewolf snapped at him with hungry jaws.

"Help me!" he cried. "For mercy's sake!"

Christine's own horse reared up in alarm and she had to fight to regain control of the terrified animal. She almost dropped her own crossbow, but managed to hold on to the reins and weapon both. The first rider, already gone from the alley, frantically yanked his horse around, but was too far away to do any good.

Drawn by the clamor, a vampire foot soldier came running into the alley. He charged at the werewolf from behind, swinging a silver-edged battle-axe. The axe sank deep into the monster's shaggy back, cleaving its spine. The werewolf died instantly, collapsing against the bleeding body of the downed horse. The trapped Death Dealer let out a gasp of relief. His rescuer wrested his axe from the creature's body.

_Well done,_ Christine thought. Looking more closely, she recognized the axe-wielding warrior as Drago, a once-mortal soldier who had only recently been initiated into the coven. As far as she was concerned, his courageous actions had proven him more than worthy of the great blessing that had been bestowed upon him._I must commend him to his superiors later, should he survive this._

She opened her mouth to praise the soldier, only to be interrupted by a ferocious roar. A hideous figure, engulfed in red-hot flames, rose up behind Drago. Christine vaguely recognized the blazing corpse that, only minutes ago, had lain outside the alley. The resurrected visitor was still caught in the throes of his dreadful transformation, so that it was hard to say what tormented him most, the awful agonies of the Change or the searing flames racing over his body. His limbs jerked spasmodically as he snarled and gnashed his jagged teeth. The smell of burning flesh and fur assailed Christine's nostrils.

_Time to put this wretched thing out of his misery._

She raised her crossbow, but there was no need; Drago wheeled about and swung his bloody axe at the flaming lycan. The silver edge of the axe sliced cleanly through the werewolf's neck. Trailing a shower of sparks, the monster's head went flying from his shoulders. The werewolf's blazing skull rebounded off a nearby wall, while the headless body dropped to the ground. Blood gushed from its bisected throat. The werewolf's limbs twitched convulsively.

Drago had little time to savor his victory. With a savage roar, a third werewolf pounced from the roof of a smoldering cottage. The beast tackled Drago, knocking the startled Death Dealer to the ground. He landed hard amidst the bloody slush, with the berserk werewolf right on top of him. The impact drove the breath from Drago's lungs. His mighty battle-axe slipped from his fingers.

"Drago!" Christine cried out. Her finger hesitated upon the trigger of her crossbow. The Death Dealer and his subhuman attacker were so close together that she feared she might hit Drago instead. Her horse backed away from the thrashing figures. She peered anxiously down the stock of the crossbow, waiting for a clear shot.

But the maniacal werewolf never gave her a chance. A voracious maw closed on Drago's face, crushing it between two powerful jaws. Bone crunched loudly. A geyser of cold vampire blood exploded over the werewolf's snout and furry pelt.

_No!_ Christine thought, shocked by Drago's sudden demise. The death of mortals was bad enough, but the death of yet another immortal…! The valiant young Death Dealer might well have lived for centuries if not for the werewolf's mindless savagery, yet he had been cut down as readily as any short-lived human. _What an appalling waste!_

What pity she had for the transformed villager vanished in an instant. An icy fury raced through her veins. Her finger squeezed tightly on the trigger.

A silver-tipped bolt avenged Drago's murder.

But there were still many more beasts to slay… including the foul originator of this obscene contagion.

_One way or another,_ she vowed, _this plague ends tonight._


	4. Chapter Three

_Chapter Three_

Elsewhere in the village, another corpse lurched to life, well on its way toward joining the pack of freshly created werewolves. The man-beast leapt to his feet. Yellow fangs gleamed between his jaws as he threw back his head to keen at the moon… only to have his howl cut short by the bloodstained silver blade that suddenly erupted from his chest. Eyes wide, he looked down to find himself impaled upon a vampire's sword.

Only a death rattle escaped his throat.

_One down,_ Arthur thought. With a grunt of satisfaction, he withdrew his blade from between the dead lycan's shoulder blades. The werewolf dropped onto the snow like a marionette whose strings had been cut._How many more to go?_

His horse pawed at the bloody slush as Arthur sat astride his steed at the fringe of the conflict. He removed his helmet to better survey the brutal fray unfolding before him. His hair was combed back from his high, pale forehead. Reddish brown tresses fell past his shoulders. Arthur had been called handsome in his time, but vanity was the least of his concerns at the moment. He frowned at the riotous melee greeting his eyes.

Their tardy attempt to cleanse the contaminated village had turned into a debacle. Everywhere he looked, Death Dealers battled reanimated corpses in various stages of transformation. Driven berserk by the moon and the vile taint in their blood, the former inhabitants of the village sought to tear the vampire warriors apart, pitting their untested claws and fangs against the Death Dealers' arms and armor. Fully transformed werewolves towered about their vampiric foes, taking advantage of their superior size and strength. They sprang from the rooftops and from beneath heavy snowdrifts. Packs of werewolves attacked in numbers, converging on the embattled Death Dealers from all directions.

A female werewolf, still wearing the tattered remains of a linen nightgown, jabbed her claws into the eyes of an unlucky Death Dealer whose helmet failed to save him from her attack. Blinded, he swung out wildly with a mace studded with silver spikes. The mace smashed in the left side of the she-wolf's face, knocking her to the ground. Her agonized yelps steered his hand as, blood streaming from the slit in his helmet, he hammered her with his mace again and again, until two more werewolves pounced on him from behind….

It was chaos.

Around the outskirts of the village, a few mutilated bodies remained inert. These, Arthur guessed, had been the last to die, their attacker striking them down as the poor mortals had fled for the dubious shelter of the surrounding woods. He knew it was only a matter of minutes before they, too, rose as werewolves.

_This foul contagion spreads like the plague._

Raife rode up beside Arthur. Behind his helmet, his face was grim. He shouted to be heard above the fray. _"Retreat to the woods!"_

"No!" Arthur yelled back. "I will stay and fight." He brandished his bloody sword. "You need my help."

Raife shook his head. "If you die, we all die. Now go!"

For the second time that night, Arthur contemplated defying Raife's command. It went against his grain to abandon their men in the heat of battle. But Raife was correct in one respect; larger matters were at stake than the outcome of this single skirmish, no matter how perilous it might be.

_William,_ he thought. _What of William? Where does my greater duty lie?_

Raife saw the hesitation in his face. "Go!"

Unhappily, Arthur dug his spurs into his horse's side. Torn between competing loyalties, he galloped into the woods.

At his back, the battle raged on without him.

Istvan looked about him warily. With a torch in one hand and a sword in the other, he stood outside a burning cottage. The heat from the fire was such that he found himself baking within his metal armor. The snow beneath his boots melted into a frigid puddle. He stepped away from the blaze, but was grateful for the fire nonetheless. With any luck, the raging conflagration would consume any infected mortals that might have lain within.

_We've got enough of these mangy bastards to deal with already._

A headless lycan lay at his feet. Istvan braced himself for the next attack, uncertain whence it would come. Flames, smoke, and drifting snow obscured his view of the bloody tumult going on all around him. Screams, growls, and angry shouting added to the confusion. Shadowy figures contended in the murky haze, stabbing and slashing at each other without mercy. Blood, both lycan and vampiric, splattered the snowy landscape. Istvan could practically taste it in the air. Thatch roofs collapsed as fire devoured the timbers supporting them. The Death Dealer's black armor was liberally bedecked with gore.

He glimpsed an indistinct figure coming toward him. "Radu?" he called out, having lost track of his comrade in the pandemonium. "Is that you?"

A canine roar suggested otherwise. Moving with preternatural speed, an immense werewolf came charging out of the snow. The beast's body struck Istvan like a battering ram and his boots took leave of the ground. He crashed through a wall of burning wattles into the smoky interior of the blazing cottage. The harsh fumes stung his lungs, throat, and nostrils. Burning embers scattered in his wake.

His collision with the floor left his head ringing. Nevertheless, he leaped to his feet, sword in hand. And well it was that he did so, for two more werewolves lunged out of the shadows at him.

_Hellfire!_ he cursed inwardly. The odds were two to one against him, leaving a swift response his only recourse. Thrusting with his arm, he stabbed the first beast so hard that the tip of his silver blade punched out through the monster's back. He hastily tugged on the hilt of the sword, praying that the blade would not get stuck between the creature's ribs. To his relief, the sword came free easily enough, and he swung it around in one smooth, continuous movement. With lethal precision, the blade sliced through the second werewolf's head, cutting the monster's skull in half. Lycan brains spilled onto the floor of the hut.

Istvan could not believe his luck. It seemed his immortality would not end this night after all. "Praise the Elders," he murmured.

Holding his sword before him, he groped through the smoke for a way out of the burning cottage. His overheated armor felt like an oven.

Despite Raife's urgent instructions, Arthur had not gone far. A stand of snow-covered firs and pines concealed him from view as he watched the battle from the edge of the woods. His steed pawed the ground impatiently, eager to leave the blood and chaos behind, but Arthur compelled the horse to stay where it was. He stroked its mane to calm it.

_William is nearby,_ he thought. _I can feel it in my bones._

Pounding hoofbeats caught his attention. He watched with interest as a lone rider came galloping out of the forest to the north. Arthur recognized the rider as yet another Death Dealer engaged in the hunt. The vampire rode into the village and alongside Raife. Arthur strained his ears to hear what the man had to report.

"We found him!" the Death Dealer exclaimed.

Raife instantly gave the rider his full attention. "And?"

"We need more men."

That was all Raife needed to hear. _"Find Christine!"_

Arthur looked on in secret as the female Elder withdrew a wet blade from her latest kill. Responding to Raife's summons, she hurried to confer with the other Elder. They spoke in hushed tones too low for Arthur to make out, but within seconds a decision appeared to have been reached. Rounding up a half dozen Death Dealers to accompany her, Christine galloped off into the very woods from which the rider had emerged, leaving Raife and the remainder of their forces behind to contend with the transformed villagers. Arthur watched as Christine and her men disappeared into the forest.

He had no doubt as to whom she sought, or why such reinforcements were required.

_They have found William… at last._

He knew also where he needed to be. Shooting a glance at Raife, he saw that the undead warlord was fully engaged in the ongoing battle against the newborn werewolves. Astride his armored destrier, Raife hacked away at his foes with his broadsword, while simultaneously shouting out commands to his beleaguered troops. "Show no mercy!" he cried out imperiously. "Let not a single mongrel escape!"

_He's far too busy to look this way,_ Arthur realized.

Confident that Raife was preoccupied with other matters, Arthur took off after Christine and the others. He rode briskly through the nocturnal forest, ducking the branches that threatened to unhorse him. Small animals scurried away as the charger's hooves pounded through the underbrush after the earlier riders. An owl hooted shrilly overhead.

Broken branches and trampled brush testified to the Death Dealers' passage. The trail would have been ridiculously easy to follow even if the fallen snow had not preserved the overlapping hoofprints of numerous riders. Arthur knew he was heading in the right direction.

He only prayed that he could catch up with Christine and the others before events passed beyond his control. Much was at stake, not the least of which was his brother's ultimate fate.

_I'm coming, William,_ he promised silently. _I'm coming!_

As if in response to his fevered thoughts, a deafening roar shook the forest. The roar bore some kinship to the growls of the werewolves back in the village, but was deeper in timbre and far louder. Compared to this thundering roar, those earlier growls were like the yelps of newborn puppies.

The colossal roar brought Arthur to a momentary halt. Even though he knew full well who—and what—had produced the roar, the blood-chilling sound was enough to daunt even the most determined spirit. He paused to steady his nerves, only to feel the ground tremble beneath his horse's hooves. The tremor shook accumulations of snow from the treetops, causing avalanches of white powder to rain down upon the floor of the forest. He brushed the icy flakes away from his face.

_What the devil?_

The source of the tremor was revealed as a knot of riderless horses exploded from the brush. They stampeded past Arthur, their eyes wide with panic. He held firmly on to the reins of his own steed, struggling to keep the anxious horse under control, while the other chargers fled for their lives. The saddles upon the horses' backs were ominously empty. Claw marks scarred the thick metal plates protecting the destriers' heads, necks, and chests. Steam jetted from their nostrils. Foam flecked their lips.

Arthur could not help wondering what had become of the horses' riders.

Another fearsome growl echoed through the night, followed by agitated screams and shouts. Heavy chains clattered in the distance.

It was all too much for Arthur' frightened steed. He dug his spurs into the horse's flanks, but the terrified destrier would go no farther. Arthur could hardly blame the animal, knowing what lay ahead.

_Very well,_ he resolved. Dismounting, he tied the horse's reins to a nearby tree trunk, then set off on foot through the wintry woods. His boots sank deep into the fallen snow.

He did not have far to go. Within minutes, he emerged from the brush and bracken into a forest clearing deeply buried in snow. He froze in his tracks, taken aback by the nightmarish spectacle before him.

Under Christine's command, a complement of Death Dealers vied against a huge albino werewolf, larger and more formidable than any of the misbegotten beasts back at the village. His thick, matted pelt was the color of the pristine snow. Rheumy pink eyes glared out from the creature's wolfen face. Herculean muscles bulged beneath his milky fur. His hot breath steamed the air.

_William._ Arthur gasped in recognition. _My brother._

If the werewolf noted his sibling's arrival, he gave no evidence of it. Instead the titanic beast roared defiantly at the Death Dealers seeking to bring him down. The undead soldiers were spread out in a circle around their formidable quarry, blocking his escape in every direction. Taking care to stay out of reach of William's claws, they fired upon the werewolf with iron spears attached to links of heavy chain.

Crossbows, specially crafted for this purpose, launched the spears at William with tremendous force. The silver tips of the spears lodged deep within his flesh. He flailed about wildly as the chains snapped taut against steel spikes anchored to the ground and surrounding tree trunks. William howled in pain and fury.

Another archer took aim at the thrashing werewolf. A vicious-looking spear sprang from a crossbow, striking William just below his ribs. Dark blood stained the werewolf's pure white fur.

That the Death Dealers seemed intent on capturing William, not slaying him, provided Arthur with scant comfort. The sight of his ill-starred brother being tormented by the soldiers' lances was more than he could bear.

"No!" he cried out. "Leave him be!"

Distracted by the Elder's cry, the archer failed to unhook the chain from his crossbow quickly enough. William grabbed hold of the links and jerked them violently, flinging the hapless Death Dealer into the air. The soldier's body slammed against a massive tree trunk with bone-crushing force. He slid down onto the ground beneath the tree and did not rise up again. Arthur feared that the vampire's neck had been shattered beyond repair.

One more life lost to the madness that had consumed his brother.

William roared in triumph, but his victory was short-lived. Arthur heard the twang of a crossbow being fired and watched in horror as a well-aimed spear pierced William's shoulder, passing all the way through the bleeding meat and gristle. Vicious silver hooks sprang to life at the exposed tip of the spear. The second archer yanked back on the chain and the cruel barbs sank into William's leathery hide. The werewolf could not tug the spear free without tearing his flesh to ribbons.

The crossbow's chain feeder spun rapidly as William reared back on his hind legs and let loose an anguished roar. The second archer hit a switch on his crossbow and the chain came free. Another Death Dealer grabbed hold of the links and hastily secured them to the frozen earth. The chain snapped taut as William tried in vain to tug it loose.

"_Stop this!"_ Arthur shouted. He felt his brother's wounds as though they were his own. _"You're killing him!"_

Standing apart from the battle, Christine looked at her fellow Elder. She had removed her helmet, which rested on the snow beside her feet. Her elegant face held a cold, inscrutable expression. Snowflakes glistened in her lustrous black hair. Her eyes locked briefly with Arthur' before she turned back toward her troops.

"_More!"_ she commanded.

Ignoring Arthur, the Death Dealers fired spear after spear at their outnumbered prey. More chains were anchored to the ground, trapping the werewolf within the clearing. His brawny shoulders drooped beneath the weight of abundant chains, which hung tangled about him like a spider's web. His breaths grew ragged. He whimpered in pain and exhaustion.

Arthur could stand it no more. Furious, he grabbed one of the archers and hurled him aside with an Elder's strength. The armored soldier landed in a snowdrift over a dozen yards away. Fearful eyes peered from behind the Death Dealer's black helmet as he scrambled toward Christine, seeking the other Elder's protection. His petrified expression betrayed his terror at being caught between two clashing Elders.

"Enough, Arthur," Christine said.

Turning his gaze back toward his persecuted brother, Arthur saw that the deed was done. The spears and chains had done their work, overcoming even William's preternatural strength and endurance. Enmeshed in his chains, the werewolf collapsed onto the snow, beaten and bleeding. His chest rose and fell beneath his heavy bonds. Only this labored breathing assured Arthur that his unfortunate brother still lived.

"William," he whispered hoarsely.

Mixed emotions warred within his chest. It could not be denied that his brother had posed a dire threat to them all. His depredations had ravaged the countryside for years now, costing the lives of countless innocent vampires and mortals. Worse yet, his hellish curse had proven damnably contagious, creating an entire breed of subhuman monsters like himself. Before William had succumbed to the primeval infection in his blood, the world had never heard of werewolves. He had become the progenitor of a loathsome new species.

And yet, William could not be blamed for what he had become. Arthur stared in sorrow at his vanquished brother. If not for a capricious twist of fate, their destinies might have been reversed. _He might have been born a vampire,_ Arthur thought, _and I… an animal._ He alone understood how hard his brother had fought against the curse.

But what would become of William now?

"_Arthur!"_

He turned to see Raife stalking out of the forest, flanked by a complement of additional Death Dealers. The warlord's armor and sword were smeared with lycan blood. His helmet had gone astray somewhere, exposing a craggy, weathered face. Although immortal, Raife resembled a man in his early fifties—the very age at which he had become a vampire. Pale brown hair, streaked with gray, hung past his shoulders. He appeared enraged to find Arthur present, in defiance of his instructions.

_To hell with him!_ Arthur thought furiously. The red-haired Elder drew his sword from its scabbard. He had his own grounds for anger. His voice rang with betrayal:

"He was not to be harmed! Place him in my charge as we agreed, or you will pay for your deceit!"

A chorus of metallic threats greeted his threat. Looking around, Arthur was surprised to find himself targeted by dozens of loaded crossbows. His jaw dropped as he realized belatedly that the Death Dealers took their orders from one Elder and one Elder alone.

Raife.

"And you will learn your place," Raife said sternly. His voice softened as he strove to reason with the other Elder. "Your sympathy for this beast is foolish." He gestured at the captured werewolf. "Your brother is entirely beyond your control." Raife shook his head. "It will be done my way."

Arthur swept his gaze over the weapons arrayed against him. His face held not a hint of fear. "You know well the consequences if you murder me… or William."

"If you so much as speak his name again," Raife warned, "you will have chosen that future for him yourself."

_Was he bluffing? Surely he wouldn't dare…?_ Arthur' blue eyes were ablaze with fury. He scanned the implacable faces of the Death Dealers, but found no sympathy for his brother's plight, nor any trace of the loyalty to which he, Arthur Corvinus, was entitled. He had no doubt that the warriors would open fire on him if Raife commanded it. _Turncoats!_ he thought venomously. He clenched his fists at his side. _Traitors!_

He looked to Christine for support, but found none to be had. Her beautiful face could have been made of porcelain for all the emotion it displayed. "There is nothing else to be done, Arthur. In time, you will understand this."

_Never!_ he thought. _Not in a thousand years!_ For a moment, he contemplated taking arms against the lot of them, Raife and Christine included. After all, he was older and stronger than them both. If he could just manage to liberate William from his bonds, the two of them might stand a chance of escaping Raife and his treacherous jackals. They could escape into the sheltering wilderness and therein plot their revenge. _I still have my own loyal vassals back at the castle,_ he reminded himself. _They will not stand by while I am treated thus. William and I can still reign over the coven as we were always meant to._

But, no… this was only a hopeless fancy. The odds against them were too great. It was two Elders against one, with over a dozen Death Dealers allied with Raife as well. And, after his ordeal, William lacked the strength to retreat, let alone engage in combat against superior numbers. Although it galled his very soul to admit it, Arthur realized that this was a fight he could not win. At least not tonight.

Scowling, he lowered his sword.

"What is thy will, milord?" he asked, his voice fairly dripping with sarcasm.

Raife chose to ignore the other Elder's impudent tone. "Imprisonment for all time," he decreed. "Far from you."

He turned and strode away, confident enough in his guards to turn his back to Arthur. He gathered his lieutenants to him and began to make the arrangements for the disposition of the prisoner.

Hatred smoldered in Arthur' eyes. Tearing his irate gaze away from Raife, he took one last look at his condemned brother. The vanquished werewolf sprawled upon the snow-covered ground, his mighty limbs rendered impotent by the chains wrapped around his furry body. The Fates alone knew when and if Arthur would ever lay eyes on William again.

_I shall not forget you, my brother,_ the Elder vowed. He wiped a blood-red tear from the corner of his eye. _I will bide my time until our moment comes round again. No matter how long we must wait, someday you shall be free once more._

_And the world will tremble before us._


	5. Chapter Four

_Chapter Four_

_**Present day**_

The abandoned mine was located in the rocky hills northeast of Budapest. A corrugated-steel door barred the entrance to the mine, which was built into the side of a hill. Rusty metal tracks led up to the sealed doorway. Security cameras monitored the approach to the mine. DANGER! NO TRESPASSING! a sign read in Hungarian. Ashley ignored the warning, tramping through the snow up to the locked entrance. A full moon provided the only illumination, but Spencer found that she could easily see through the dark.

Another side effect of her new condition?

The young American was still trying to process all the life-altering changes that had been thrown at her over the last few nights. Barely seventy-two hours ago, she hadn't even believed in vampires or werewolves. Now she was some sort of a vampire/werewolf hybrid and caught in the middle of a life-and-death struggle she was only just beginning to comprehend, in the company of a lethal woman she barely knew. She had been shot, bitten, abducted, drugged, and nearly devoured since stumbling into that firefight in the subway station three nights ago.

_How did this happen to me?_ she wondered. _I just want to be a doctor, that's all._

A pang struck her as she thought longingly of her dinky apartment in the city, and of her residency back at the hospital. Both were less than an hour away by car, but they might as well have been on another planet. Her old life was over now. There was no turning back.

_It's just me and Ashley now._

A high-tech lock protected the mine from intruders. Ashley entered the key code, then pressed her thumb against a biometric sensor. The rusty metal door squealed loudly as she threw it open, exposing the interior of the mine. It was pitch-black inside, obscuring Spencer's view of what lay beyond. It had been Ashley's idea to seek out this so-called safe house, after they'd fled the lycans' underground lair beneath the city. she assumed Ashley knew what she was doing.

_I have to trust her,_ she thought. _She's all I have left in the world._

A power box was mounted on the wall just inside the mountain. Ashley flipped the switch, but nothing happened. The safe house remained as dark as before. She scowled in annoyance.

_Power must be out,_ Spencer guessed. She wondered when was the last time anyone had visited this location. From outside, the mine looked as if it had been deserted for years. _Appearances can be deceiving, _she reminded herself, _as I'm starting to learn all too well._

Take, for instance, the leather-clad woman standing by the power box. Spencer recalled the first time she had laid eyes on her, at that subway station downtown. She had been attracted to Ashley immediately, but had thought that she was just another hot-looking European chick. How was Spencer to know that she was really a kick-ass vampire assassin?

_I didn't have a clue,_ she thought.

Ashley drew an automatic pistol from beneath the folds of her voluminous black trench coat. A light mount was attached to the stock of the gun. She pressed a switch and a thin beam of light penetrated the darkness. The search-beam fell upon… the face of an enraged werewolf!

_Oh, fuck!_ Spencer thought. Her brown eyes turned into molten jet-black orbs as she instinctively started to change into her hybrid form. Sharpened talons extended from her fingertips…

But Ashley was way ahead of her. She squeezed the trigger of her handgun and fired repeatedly at the monster. Gunshots echoed inside the mine, and the muzzle of the pistol flashed in the darkness as she emptied an entire clip of silver bullets into the creature.

Would that be enough to kill the beast? Spencer watched anxiously, waiting for the werewolf to either fall over dead or come charging at them. But the monster seemed to have no reaction to the barrage of silver bullets. Its savage face remained exactly where it was, its open jaws frozen in the same fixed expression. Ivory fangs glinted in the beam of the searchlight. Cobalt eyes stared glassily into space.

_Wait a sec,_ Spencer thought. _Something's not right here._

Ashley appeared to have reached the same conclusion. She let up on the trigger and swept the beam over the unmoving creature before them. Spencer saw now that the werewolf was hanging lifelessly in a cagelike apparatus at the far end of the chamber. Thick lengths of chain were looped beneath the monster's underarms, suspending the body from the ceiling. A metallic harness was fastened around the werewolf's neck and snout. Old wounds could be glimpsed through its shaggy black pelt. Its jaws were locked in a rictus of agony, not attack.

No blood flowed from the multiple bullet holes Ashley had just inflicted on the beast. She lowered her gun and glanced at Spencer.

"I may have overreacted," she said, with just a trace of embarrassment in her voice.

_No shit,_ Spencer thought. The werewolf was obviously long dead. Spencer's talons retracted back into her fingers and her eyes turned human once more. Her heartbeat slowed to a less frenetic pace. Obviously, the dead creature posed no threat to them. _Talk about a shock, though!_

She couldn't help noticing how quickly she had started to transform at the sight of a potential enemy. She had changed without thinking, just as she had during that final battle with Raife back in the underworld. Was her bizarre new existence already becoming second nature to her? The change had felt as natural as breathing, which scared her more than a little.

_Get used to it,_ she told herself harshly. _This is who you are now._

_Easier said than done,_ another part of her mind answered back.

Tucking her pistol back beneath her coat, Ashley located a fuse box on the opposite wall. She opened the box and reset the tripped switches. A generator hummed somewhere deeper inside the mine. Fluorescent lights flickered to life overhead. The sudden illumination hurt Spencer's eyes and she blinked against the glare.

The dead werewolf could be seen more easily now. Looking closer, Spencer saw that the body had been hooked up to various pieces of sophisticated medical technology, including an electrocardiogram, intracranial-pressure monitor, Swan-Ganz catheter, a mobile X-ray unit, and your basic physiologic monitor, all top-of-the-line. Electrodes were connected to shaved portions of the werewolf's anatomy. A crash cart held an emergency defibrillator, just in case the Death Dealers had needed to revive one of their lycan guinea pigs. A metal tray rested on a stainless-steel counter next to the open cage. Scalpels, scissors, forceps, retractors, hemostats, and other surgical tools were scattered atop the tray. Spencer scowled at the obvious bloodstains on the instruments; maintaining a sterile environment was obviously not a priority. Anesthetics were conspicuously absent.

The blonde recalled the safe house she and Ashley had briefly stayed at in the city, after their escape from the vampires' mansion. Ashley had mentioned that lycan prisoners were sometimes interrogated at such locations. From the looks of things here, those prisoners also got turned into guinea pigs on occasion—by vampire scientists looking for newer and better ways to exterminate their ancient foes?

She felt a stab of sympathy for the poor, dead beast. Only a few hours ago, Spencer had been strapped to an examination table herself, while Glen extracted Spencer's blood for his own arcane experiments. The lycan leader had intended to use a unique enzyme in Spencer's blood to transform himself into an unstoppable werewolf/vampire hybrid, but his master plan had gone awry. In the end, Glen had perished, and Spencer had become the hybrid.

For better or for worse.

Ashley lifted a portable hydrocarbon analyzer from the tray and inspected the digital readout. Spencer couldn't tell if the numbers meant anything to the vampire. Despite everything they had endured together over the last few nights, she still found Ashley beautifully sculpted face difficult to read. Most of the time, Ashley kept her private thoughts and feelings locked up inside her, just as she probably had for hundreds of years. Spencer wondered briefly just how old she really was.

In theory, she was now immortal, too. Spencer's brain rebelled against the concept, even though she knew for a fact that Raife and Glen had been around since at least the Middle Ages. Would she also live for uncounted centuries? Spencer couldn't even begin to wrap her head around the idea. _It's hard to think about living forever,_ she mused, _when people keep trying to kill you every few hours._

Ashley dropped the analyzer back onto the tray and examined the shaggy corpse hanging nearby. "This thing's been dead for weeks."

"I don't get it," Spencer said. She was still trying to learn the rules of this strange new world she was now a part of. "I thought lycans went back to their human form when they die."

"They do," the brunette replied. "This one's been given a serum to stop the regression so that it can be studied in its wolfen form."

Spencer remembered the drug Glen's flunkies had injected her with, to delay her own transformation into a werewolf. She wondered if the serums were related. "How can you tell?"

She flipped the beast's toe tag toward Spencer. A notation read, _Subject injected with 850 ml Thasarine to arrest regression._

"Oh," Spencer said. What the hell was Thasarine? She had never heard of the drug before. "Not exactly your department, I guess."

"I just killed them," Ashley said bluntly. "I didn't worry too much about their anatomy."

Now that her eyes had adjusted to the light, Spencer was able to take a better look around. What had once been an empty mine shaft had been converted into a well-stocked bunker and safe house. Weapons lockers, packed with automatic rifles and handguns, lined gray concrete walls, along with file cabinets, workbenches, and numerous crates of ammo. One entire corner of the bunker had been taken over by what looked like a high-tech operations center, complete with computer consoles and plasma screens. A refrigerator hummed against another wall.

The whole place reminded her of that safe house in Pest. Stepping away from the werewolf's cage, she made a mental note not to let Ashley handcuff her to a chair the way she had the last time. _We're sticking together this time around, whether she likes it or not._

Spencer toyed with the scalpels and forceps on the tray. The familiar tools comforted her in a way, providing her with a poignant reminder of her old life. _Do vampires ever need doctors?_ she wondered. She remembered treating Ashley's injuries after that car crash three nights ago. For all she knew, she might actually have saved her life. _Perhaps I can still have a career of sorts, if and when people stop trying to murder us!_

"How long can we stay here?" she asked.

"Not long," Ashley said grimly. She led her over to the control center she had noticed before. Video screens mounted on the wall above the main console offered views of the grounds outside the mine. The night-vision photography glowed an eerie shade of green. A computer monitor resting atop a metal counter ran through a series of maps and status reports. "These safe houses are all linked together on one mainframe, with motion sensors revealing which ones are active. Someone could have picked us up already."

_Someone_ being Ashley's fellow vampires, Spencer realized. Thanks to her, Ashley was now a fugitive from her own people.

Turning away from the computer station, Ashley started looking over the guns in the nearest weapons rack. She shrugged off her damp leather coat, revealing a lithe figure encased in skintight black leather. Dropping the coat on top of a waist-high metal filing cabinet, she cracked open a crate of ammo and began to reload her guns. Twin holsters were strapped to her thighs. A hunting knife was sheathed on her ankle.

"Now that Raife is dead," she continued, "the hunt will be on for his killer. It's only a matter of time before I'm found."

"But none of this is your fault," The young doctor protested. "We have proof that Raife lied. Aiden, too." Aiden was a double-crossing vampire slimeball who had plotted to take control of the coven. Spencer had only met him once, but was not likely to forget him, considering that Aiden had shot her in the chest with bullets filled with deadly silver nitrate. If not for Ashley, Spencer would have died there and then. "I have Glen's genetic memories."

Those memories, transferred to Spencer when the lycan commander had bit him, had revealed the true origins of the war between the vampires and the werewolves. It was Raife who had started the war—by executing his own daughter after she'd fallen in love with a lycan. As far as Spencer was concerned, Raife had fully deserved to have his head sliced in half by Ashley.

Surely the other vampires would take that into account?

Ashley didn't seem to think so. "All that will be beyond useless if Aiden reaches Arthur first and kills the last remaining Elder." According to Ashley, one more vampire Elder was still residing in a tomb underneath the vampires' mansion; she had done her best to fill Spencer in on the intricacies of vampire politics on their way to the mine. "Aiden's a coward. He'll want to strike while Arthur is still vulnerable. He knows he's no match for him awake."

Spencer had experienced Raife's awesome power firsthand. She didn't want to think about how strong this "Arthur" might be. _Ashley and I barely beat Raife on our own,_ she recalled. _I'm in no hurry to go up against another Elder._

A thought occurred to her and she glanced at her wristwatch. Like the clothes on her back, the watch had been salvaged from a dead lycan on their way out of the underworld.

"There's only about an hour until daylight," she said. "Can you make it back to the mansion before the sun comes up?"

Sunlight was fatal to vampires, just as silver was to werewolves. Something the movies got right for once.

"Just," Ashley said grimly.

Spencer didn't like the sound of that. Joining Ashley by the weapons cabinet, she picked out a couple of pistols more or less randomly. She wasn't about to admit to the vampire that she had never pulled a gun on anyone in her life, let alone shot somebody. She didn't know the first thing about firearms. _Then again,_ she thought, _I've never been a hybrid monster before either._

"Okay," she said. "Let's get what we need and go."

Ashley laid a restraining hand upon her arm. "No," she said softly.

_Huh?_ Spencer looked at her in confusion. What did she mean by that?

Ashley eyes avoided hers. She hesitated, obviously uncomfortable.

"I'm going alone," she insisted.


	6. Chapter Five

_Chapter Five_

The mansion was known as Ordoghaz in the local tongue, or "Devil's House". Located about an hour north of downtown Budapest, near the sleepy town of Szentendre, the imposing Gothic estate deserved its evil reputation, having served as the vampires' lair since the days when Raife had ruled over feudal Hungary with an iron hand. Freshly fallen snow blanketed the jagged spires and battlements rising above its looming stone walls. Majestic columns and pointed arches adorned its brooding facade. A cast-iron fence, equipped with spikes and mounted security cameras, guarded the coven's privacy.

To Aiden, Ordoghaz offered sanctuary of a sort, but only if he moved swiftly enough. He limped through the snow toward the forbidding stone gates, drawn by the lights shining from the mansion's narrow lancet windows. _I must reach the crypt before Ashley,_ he thought desperately. _She cannot be allowed to rouse Arthur and plead her case._ Aiden knew his punishment would be severe if the dreaded Elder ever learned of his alliance with Glen.

Aiden had seen better nights. Every inch of his fine silk garments and elegant jewellery was coated with blood, muck, and snow. The dark fabric was soaked completely through; had he been human, he would have succumbed to hypothermia by now. His shoulder-length black locks were plastered to his skull. His aristocratic face was taut and drawn. A burning pain in his right leg reminded him of Glen's dying blow, when the lycan commander had stabbed him with that damned spring-loaded blade of his!

_At least that bastard is dead for good,_ Aiden thought, although that came as scant comfort at the moment. _I should have killed him ages ago._

_Just like I always claimed to have done._

After centuries of plotting and scheming, everything had gone wrong. By now, Aiden had hoped to be the undisputed leader of the coven, having conspired with Glen to overthrow the Elders and bring an end to the eternal war between their two species. Aiden had expected to be hailed as a hero and peacemaker; instead he had found himself on the run after Ashley had exposed his treachery to Raife. Forced to seek refuge with Glen in the lycan's squalid underground warren, he had barely survived the final battle between Raife's Death Dealers and Glen's lycan army. Only by scurrying away like a rat through the sewers had he been able to escape the underworld in one piece—but not before watching from the shadows as Ashley executed Raife with his own sword!

Bile rose in his throat as he thought of Ashley. This was all her fault, she and that freakish hybrid lover of hers! Hidden from sight, he had witnessed the obscene abomination Spencer Carlin had become, making Ashley's obvious affection for her all the more appalling. Aiden had long lusted after Ashley's svelte body, but now he craved only her complete and total annihilation. _She will pay for rejecting me,_ he vowed, _and bringing all my plans to ruin!_

To his relief, the limestone gates opened automatically at his approach. Raife, one hundred years out-of-date at the time of his premature Awakening, had clearly neglected to revoke Aiden's electronic security clearance. _Thank the dark gods for small favors,_ he thought. He was in no condition to climb over the spiked fence.

A long, paved driveway led to the mansion's front entrance, beyond a sculpted marble fountain. With the temperature well below freezing, the fountain's water display had been shut off. Plumes of churning white water no longer reached toward the sky.

Aiden staggered up the marble steps in front of the mansion. He pounded loudly on the heavy oaken doors barring his way. "Open up!" he shouted to whoever might be on the other side of the door. With luck, most of the Death Dealers had joined Ashley and Raife on their ill-fated sorties into the underworld. Hopefully, that left his own private security force in control of the mansion. "Let me in, goddammit!"

The huge double doors swung open. A large, stocky vampire peered out at him. Aiden recognized the face of Miklos, one of Soren's thuggish underlings. He stared at Aiden as though he barely recognized his leader through all the blood and gunk. "Regent?"

Aiden was in no mood to explain his filthy appearance. He shoved his way past Miklos into the mansion's sumptuous foyer. Antique tapestries and oil paintings decorated the polished oak-paneled walls. Marble tiles stretched across the floor to where a majestic grand stairway ascended toward the upper stories of Ordoghaz. A spectacular crystal chandelier hung above the foyer. Compared to the lycans' fetid ratholes, the mansion's richly appointed interior struck Aiden as more palatial than ever. He brushed the snow from his head and shoulders, glad to be out of the blizzard at last.

Although it was nearly dawn, the entire mansion was still wide-awake. Undead gentlemen and ladies, stylishly attired in shades of red and black, came pouring out of the adjacent parlor in response to his arrival. More of the mansion's residents rushed down the stairs, having not yet retired for the morning. No Death Dealers these, the milling vampires were instead sophisticates and dilettantes, much like Aiden himself, who preferred to spend their immortality in various hedonistic pursuits, as opposed to never-ending battles against the lycan hordes. Many of them still clutched crystal goblets filled with spiced blood cocktails. Tonight, however, the vampires' habitually jaded faces bore expressions of fear and concern. Desperate for news from the front, they pelted Aiden with anxious questions: Was Glen still alive? Had the lycans been destroyed? Where were Raife and the others? Was it true that Christine had been assassinated by the lycans? What had become of Sean, and Soren, and Ashley…?

As far as Aiden knew, he was the only vampire to emerge from the underworld alive. Not counting Ashley, of course. But he had better things to do than waste time answering the questions of these worthless parasites. Glancing over the throng in the foyer, he was grateful to spy no trace of that amorous servant girl Madison. Was she sulking in her room, or had she fled the mansion altogether after he had slammed the car door in her face during his last escape? _No matter,_ he thought, _just so long as she is gone._ The last thing he needed right now was that lovesick blond trollop clinging to him.

His mind raced frantically, considering his options. With Raife and Christine both deceased, there was still a chance to turn matters to his advantage. _All I need to do is destroy Arthur,_ he reasoned, _while the Elder is still asleep and vulnerable. Then the coven will be mine to command._

That still left Ashley to deal with, alas. No doubt she would try to expose his perfidy to the rest of the coven, but it would be her word against his. And who would the other vampires believe, Raife's chosen regent—or a coldhearted bitch who had willingly chosen to consort with a lycan? Aiden felt certain that he could turn the coven against Ashley. Politics was not exactly the female Death Dealer's forte.

Ignoring the sycophants and sybarites flocking around him pleading for reassurance, he nodded at Miklos. "Gather the men," he ordered him curtly. Now that he was back in familiar surroundings, some of his former self-confidence reasserted itself. Not for the first time, he congratulated himself for having had the foresight to assemble his own security team, independent of Ashley and the other Death Dealers. "Tell them to meet me outside the crypt at once!"

"Yes, regent!" Miklos replied. He hastened to carry out Aiden's instructions. "As you command!"

Aiden was pleased by the vampire's obedience. Perhaps this Miklos would make a serviceable replacement for Soren, whom Aiden assumed to have perished in the underworld. _I will need a new enforcer,_ he thought, _once I have regained control of the coven._

First things first, however. He still had an Elder to kill.

Aiden took a few minutes to wipe the blood and dirt from his face, then made his way down to the security booth outside the Elders' crypt, in the mansion's lowest sub-basement. Closed-circuit television screens monitored the interior of the crypt, as well as the grounds outside the mansion. Thankfully, it had required little effort to persuade the throng of feckless hangers-on to remain upstairs; even at the best of times, few of the mansion's occupants chose to venture this near the Elders' somber resting place.

Miklos had assembled a four-man strike team. Grim-faced, the vampire guards cradled Uzis against the front of their black leather dusters. Aiden gladly accepted an extra rifle from Miklos, having discarded his experimental silver-nitrate gun after running out of ammo during his escape from the underworld. It felt good to be armed once more.

He pressed a button on the control panel and the entrance to the crypt slid open. Despite his newly acquired bodyguards, he hesitated upon the threshold, daunted by the enormity of the task ahead. Killing an Elder, even in his sleep, was no small matter; he still found it hard to accept that Ashley had actually defeated Raife in combat, even though he had witnessed the warlord's death with his own eyes.

_If she can do it, so can I._

He reminded himself that Arthur was surely weakened by over two hundred years of hibernation. Even Raife had required several hours to recover from his recent Awakening, before embarking on his raid into the underworld. If all went well, Arthur would be dead before he even realized what was happening.

Or so Aiden hoped.

Dimly lit and cavernous, the crypt was the slowly beating heart of Ordoghaz. Granite steps led down to the sunken lower level, where three burnished bronze disks were embedded in the stone floor. A concentric pattern of overlapping Celtic runes surrounded the circular hatches, each of which was engraved with a single letter: _C_ for Christine, _R_ for Raife, and _A_ for Arthur.

The plaques marked the individual tombs of the Elders, only one of which was still occupied. In theory, Arthur still slumbered in his buried sarcophagus, blissfully ignorant of the cataclysmic events that had rocked the coven over the last few nights. If Aiden had his way, the last of the Elders would never rise again.

A line from _Macbeth_ flashed through his brain: _If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly._ Aiden had attended the play's premiere in London four hundred years ago and recognized just how apt the quotation was. Macbeth had also murdered a monarch in his sleep, so as to fulfill his vaulting ambition. Aiden could only hope that his own grab for power ended less tragically. _Macbeth was a mere mortal,_ he recalled, _and fictional to boot._

Swallowing hard, he screwed his courage to the sticking place and gestured toward the doorway. "Go on," he ordered the guards impatiently, not about to go first. "Let's get this over with."

Flashlight beams raked through the gloom as the other men preceded him into the crypt. Aiden descended the granite steps behind them, feeling the temperature drop a couple degrees with every step. His nerves were strung so tightly he feared they would snap before he reached the bottom of the steps. A funereal hush enveloped the ancient crypt, broken only by the footsteps of Aiden and his entourage. His undead heart was beating a mile a minute.

_Just stick to the plan,_ he reminded himself. _Everything is under control…._

A lifeless body lay sprawled upon the bottom floor of the crypt, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle. A weathered, middle-aged profile was pressed against the marble tiles. Owlish eyes stared blankly into the void. The man's dingy brown coat was streaked with blood. Dead for hours, the discarded corpse had already begun to stink.

Gagging at the stench, Aiden recognized Singe, a lycan scientist who had formerly labored in Glen's service. Ashley had captured Singe and "persuaded" him to reveal to Raife the existence of Aiden's secret alliance with Glen, forcing Aiden to flee the mansion with all due speed. Singe had still been alive when last Aiden had seen him. He wondered briefly who had actually killed the worthless lycan, Ashley or Raife?

_What does it matter?_ he decided. The loose-lipped scientist had already caused enough trouble. _I only regret that I can't kill the bastard myself._

A river of blood had flowed from the lycan's crushed skull, pooling and coagulating atop the engraved bronze hatches. Dark, clotted gore defiled the raised letter _M_ on Arthur' plaque. The smell of congealed lycan blood turned Aiden's stomach.

He pointed at the hatch. "Open it."

"Yes, regent." Miklos himself knelt beside Arthur' hatch. Heedless of the sticky black goo, he inserted his beefy fingers into the cold metal grooves surrounding the _A._ Ancient gears, untouched for over two centuries, resisted his efforts at first, but then an inner disk rotated beneath his fingers, activating the dormant locking mechanism. Miklos rose and stepped aside as the intricate designs adorning the hatch began to shift of their own accord. Aiden heard the muted rumble of a hidden clockwork apparatus slowly coming back to life. The circular plaque sank into the floor, then split apart into four wedge-shaped segments that retracted from sight, exposing the top of the steel sarcophagus below. Another _A,_ illuminated in lapis lazuli, confirmed that Arthur dwelt within.

_But not for much longer,_ Aiden vowed. He fully intended to incinerate the Elder's remains until naught but ashes were left behind. "Ready your weapons!" he informed the guards. _Tonight a new era begins in the history of the coven. The era of Aiden the Supreme…_

The crypt itself seemed to shudder as a harsh grinding noise suddenly came from below. Aiden's eyes widened in alarm. He had attended numerous Awakenings in his time and they had never produced such a clangor. Instead of operating smoothly, as it had down through the centuries, the ancient apparatus sounded as though it was tearing itself apart. Steel ground loudly against stone, producing a discordant clamor that caused several of Aiden's guards to place their hands over their ears. They looked in confusion to Aiden, who was no less dumbfounded than they. His jaw dropped.

_Something's wrong,_ he realized. _Horribly wrong._

A look of utter dread washed over his face as the ornate sarcophagus lurched upward from beneath the floor. The empty coffin was torn to shreds, as though Arthur had literally clawed his way out of the metal tomb!

_But how?_ Aiden thought. _Why?_ The Elder should have been dreaming in silence, dead to the world. What had roused him from two centuries of unbroken slumber?

An awful suspicion came over him. He shot a worried glance at the body of the dead lycan, lying only a few yards away. His eyes traced the stream of dried blood flowing from Singe's corpse to the empty shaft that had been concealed beneath the bronze _A._ Crimson stains could be seen within the mangled wreckage of the sarcophagus.

_Singe's blood!_ he realized in horror. Beneath his sodden garments, a cold sweat broke out over his body. _The lycan's blood must have awakened Arthur!_

A dry, raspy sound emerged from the murky shaft. Unseen lungs wheezed noisily.

_Arthur?_

Aiden backed away from the shaft. Every instinct in his body urged him to bolt for the stairs and leave the accursed crypt behind, but he was hesitant to flee so blatantly in front of his few remaining acolytes. He needed to put on a show of strength if he ever hoped to regain his former position in the coven.

_I should have never returned to this goddamn house!_ he thought bitterly. Eternal exile was sounding more and more appealing. _I had an entire planet to hide in!_

Suddenly, the very floor of the crypt shook beneath him. A tremendous pounding came from below, as though something—or someone—beneath the stone floor was striving to break free. The tremors threw Aiden and the other vampires off-balance. Aiden stumbled and nearly fell. His hand reached out to steady himself, coming to rest against the twisted iron frame of the sarcophagus. One foot landed in the pool of congealed blood around Singe's corpse. The sticky gore clung to the sole of his shoe.

Fear showed on the faces of his men. Like Aiden, they looked about them anxiously, their fingers on the triggers of their automatic rifles. They shifted uneasily on their feet, trying to keep their balance despite the gargantuan blows shaking the floor of the crypt. Naturally pale faces turned even more ashen.

"May the Elders preserve us!" Miklos exclaimed. The other men muttered in agreement.

_Not bloody likely,_ Aiden thought. There was only one Elder left, and he did not appear to be in a benevolent mood. Aiden's confidence deserted him and he opened his mouth to order an immediate retreat. _We have to get out of here… now!_

But before he could take another step toward the exit, a shadowy figure erupted from the floor. The force of the explosion threw him backward, onto the floor. Chunks of shattered stone and tile rained down on him like shrapnel. He cried out in pain as the jagged fragments pelted his face and body, slicing through silk and flesh alike. Fresh blood streamed onto the ruptured floor. His Uzi slipped from his fingers.

_No!_ he thought hysterically. _This can't be happening!_

Blood from a scalp wound ran down his face, obscuring his vision. Dazed, he blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of the chaotic scene unfolding around him. Automatic weapons fired wildly, their muzzle flares creating a strobe effect that disoriented Aiden even further. All he caught were fragmentary impressions of a dark figure laying waste to his men.

An inhuman growl echoed throughout the crypt, audible even over the blare of the rifles. The hellish noise sounded like a cross between a wolf's howl and the screech of an enraged vampire bat.

Leathery black skin flashed across his field of vision at preternatural speed. Gleaming black eyes shone like polished obsidian.

Gunfire chipped away at venerable stone walls, but failed to stop the creature loose in the devastated crypt. Dust and pulverized stone went flying. Powdered debris filled the air. The acrid odor of cordite invaded Aiden's nostrils, overpowering the stench from the dead lycan. Smoke rose from the barrels of the unleashed Uzis.

A rifle was snatched right out of a soldier's grip, only seconds before the hapless vampire was catapulted into the nearest wall with enough force to crack the ancient stones. His body slid to the floor, where it collapsed into a heap.

Bloodstained talons raked across another vampire's face. Blood gushed between his fingers as he clutched his mutilated countenance.

Panicky shouts gave way to bloodcurdling screams. Aiden listened with alarm as, one by one, the guards' rifles clattered to the floor. A peculiar flapping noise reached his ears.

Immortal bones snapped like twigs.

Bright arterial blood sprayed like a fountain from a headless body.

"Heinrich!" another guard shouted in horror, only seconds before a clawed hand exploded from his chest. A bony fist crushed the vampire's still-beating heart within its grip.

Aiden caught another glimpse of an indistinct figure behind the dead guard, but the creature moved too quickly for him to focus on it. Within a split second, the figure retracted its claw and disappeared back into the shadows. Its victim dropped lifelessly onto the shattered floor.

It was a massacre.

A third soldier dashed toward the steps, only to be snatched back by his collar and dragged back into the bloodbath. Smoke and dust concealed what happened next. An agonized shriek was cut off abruptly.

Miklos cried out frantically, momentarily exposed by the flare of his Uzi. A pair of gleaming fangs sank into his neck and his rifle fell silent. The strobing muzzle blinked out, shrouding the guard's fate in darkness. His dying scream trailed off into a pathetic moan before Aiden heard another body drop limply onto the floor.

Suddenly, it was over. The screams and gunfire no longer assailed his ears. Silence descended once more over the abattoir the defiled crypt had become. Aiden trembled uncontrollably as he realized that he was alone in the dark with… it.

"Milord?" Aiden had never known an Elder to Awaken in such a bloodthirsty rage, but who else could it be.

He groped desperately for his own rifle, but could not find the weapon amidst the rubble. He choked on the dusty air, coughing loudly. Staggering to his feet, he gazed desperately at the open doorway only a few yards away. His own cold blood continued to trickle down his face.

The nearby exit tantalized him. Escape was so close!

But not close enough.

Something landed on the floor behind him with a meaty smack. He could hear the creature's raspy breathing. It smelled of decaying flesh. Bony talons scraped against the broken tiles.

Aiden whimpered in fright. He wasn't sure what was worse, not seeing whatever was behind him or being forced to face it. His hair stood on end, and he could hear the panicked palpitations of his heart. Marshaling his last ounce of courage, he nervously turned around to confront the mysterious apparition that had just slaughtered his men so effortlessly.

Perhaps he could still talk his way out of this situation?

The smoke, dust, and dim lighting made it hard to see the monster clearly, even though it was now standing only a few feet from him. Aiden strained his eyes to see a hairless, mummified figure wearing black silk trousers. A tarnished gold belt girded the creature's waist. Gilded armbands circled his bony biceps. Molten black eyes, unlike any vampire's, coldly examined Aiden. Fresh blood dripped from its jaws. Its blackened skin was the color of a gangrenous limb.

_Shrack!_ Without warning, a pair of batlike wings snapped out of the creature's shoulder blades. The wings spread out behind him, spanning nearly ten feet from tip to tip. Arched bones and twisted networks of veins were visible throughout the fleshy membranes. Ebony talons crowned the demonic wings.

Aiden's eyes widened in disbelief. Never had he witnessed anything like this. Tales of vampires transforming into bats were foolish mortal myths, nothing more, so how was this possible? What _was_ this creature before him?

"Please," he begged.

A sudden flurry of movement cut off his desperate plea. The creature's wings exploded forward, striking Aiden with the force of a wrecking ball. The regent's back slammed against the wall behind him so hard that the impact cracked the dense stonework. Deep fissures spread like cobwebs across the face of the wall. The force of the collision left Aiden stunned and breathless.

He felt a sharp, searing pain in his shoulders. Looking down, he saw with alarm that both shoulders had been impaled by the spearlike tips of the monster's wings. Blood streamed down the front of his black silk shirt. Aiden realized in horror that he had literally been nailed to the wall of the crypt!

The creature leaned toward him. A beam of light from the control room exposed a gaunt, emaciated visage with ebony eyes and an aquiline nose. A mouthful of pointed, sharklike teeth dripped blood onto the figure's bare chest. Tapered ears lay flat against the creature's skull. Purple veins pulsed across the monster's smooth, bald cranium. Its mottled skin was dry as dust.

Aiden barely recognized the transformed Elder. His overwhelmed brain struggled to account for the ancient vampire's bizarre metamorphosis. Arthur' unearthly black eyes jogged Aiden's memory, and he suddenly recalled where he had seen such eyes before: on the face of Spencer Carlin during her final battle with Raife, after Ashley's lycan sweetheart had undergone a similar transformation—into an unnatural hybrid of vampire and werewolf.

_Just like Singe predicted,_ Aiden recalled. His gaze darted to the body of the dead lycan scientist. Before his well-earned demise, Singe had explained how a unique component in Carlin's blood, inherited from Alexander Carlinus himself, allowed vampire and lycan blood cells to combine to form a new hybrid species, theoretically more powerful than any other immortal bloodline. According to Singe, Glen had intended to use Carlin's blood to transform himself into just such a hybrid, but Aiden had killed the scheming lycan before he had the chance to carry out his blasphemous plan. Instead it had been Spencer Carlin who had become the hybrid, after Ashley added her own bite to the lycan taint already infecting Carlin's blood.

Despite his immediate peril, Aiden could not suppress a flash of jealousy at the memory of Ashley bestowing her crimson kiss upon Carlin's unworthy throat. _She could have ruled the coven by my side,_ he recalled spitefully. _But instead she chose that ignorant American!_

Arthur' wings dug painfully into Aiden's shoulders, dragging the trapped vampire back into the present. He tried to grasp how the Elder could have become a hybrid as well. Singe had implied that only a pure sample of "the Carlinus strain" could permit the existence of a hybrid, but apparently he had been mistaken. Although separated by generations, Spencer Carlin and Arthur Carlinus clearly shared the same singular mutation. Singe's blood had been enough to trigger the transformation in the revived Elder. The gigantic bat-wings, however, suggested that Arthur' vampire side was clearly dominant.

Black eyes glanced at the dead lycan. The Elder's voice when he spoke was hoarse from two hundred years of disuse. "The blood memories of this wretched creature have shown me that your treachery knows no bounds."

Aiden's bloody face turned deathly white. Arthur had obviously absorbed Singe's knowledge of Aiden's secret alliance with Glen. His heart pounded within his chest. "Milord… I can explain—"

"Why should I listen to your lies," Arthur hissed, "when the journey to the truth is so much sweeter?"

The Elder's withered lips curled in a smile of… forgiveness? Understanding?

Hardly.

Ivory fangs tore into Aiden's throat. A crimson flood poured down Arthur' throat, and Aiden felt his own memories being sucked out of his body along with his life's blood. Images from the recent past flashed across the minds of both the Elder and his victim:

_Aiden sat in the back of a parked limousine, conspiring with Glen. Pouring rain streaked down the sides of the tinted windows. A crest-shaped pendant dangled from the lycan's neck. The gleaming pendant had once belonged to Kyla, Raife's daughter—and Glen's long-dead lover. It had been their forbidden passion that had ignited the centuries-old conflict between the vampires and their former servants._

"_Remember," Glen warned Aiden, "I've bled for you once already." Aiden's false claim to have slain the dreaded lycan commander had led directly to his ascendance within the coven. "Without me, you'd have nothing. You'd be… nothing."_

Later:

_Aiden watched in dismay as Ashley sank her fangs into Spencer Carlin's throat, triggering her transformation into a hybrid abomination. Glen lay upon the floor of the underground bunker, his dying body riddled with deadly silver-nitrate bullets. Aiden had shot Glen repeatedly, but the stubborn lycan had clung to life with the last vestiges of his immortal strength. Distended black veins snaked across his face._

_He taunted Aiden with his final breaths. "You may have killed me, cousin, but my will is done regardless."_

_Aiden opened fire once again, emptying the last of the experimental rounds into the lycan's writhing body. Another dose of silver nitrate raced through Glen's throbbing veins. Tendrils of yellow smoke rose from his lips and nostrils as his internal organs combusted volcanically._

_Glen, champion of the lycan hordes, died at last._

A few minutes earlier:

_Aiden hurled the ugly truth in Ashley's face, savoring her shocked expression. "It was Raife who killed your family, not the lycans. It was he who crept from room to room, dispatching everyone close to your heart!"_

_He remembered laying eyes on Ashley for the first time, in those miserable stables six hundred years ago. The female Death Dealer had been delectably mortal then, a vision of nubile vulnerability in her soaked linen nightgown. If only Raife had let him ravish her that night, as Aiden had originally intended!_

_This entire disaster could have been averted if Ashley had simply died with the rest of her insignificant, mortal family._

Later:

_Hidden away in one of the underworld's many shadowy nooks, Aiden watched as Ashley and Spencer Carlin battled Raife in the lowest level of the lycans' subterranean den. Water streamed from broken pipes and rain-filled gutters, flooding the floor of the abandoned bunker. Raife stood ankle-deep in the turbid water as he throttled Carlin with his bare hands. The American's hybrid strength was not enough to save her from the Elder's murderous grip. Carlin gasped impotently for breath. The iridescent sheen of her gray-blue hybrid flesh began to fade._

_Then Ashley leaped past Raife, swinging the Elder's own mighty broadsword. Her sleek black leathers glistened wetly as she landed behind Raife like a jaguar, still clutching the double-edged sword. The Elder spun around and glared angrily at his former protégée, enraged by her defiance. He drew a pair of silver daggers from his belt._

_Unafraid, Ashley waved the sword before his eyes. Fresh blood ran down the length of the blade. A stunned expression came over Raife's face as he realized that Ashley had already delivered a killing blow. A thin red line materialized across the Elder's countenance, stretching diagonally from his left ear down to the right side of his collar. A look of profound disbelief filled Raife's eyes._

_Fully half his skull slid away, splashing into the filthy water around his ankles._

_Moments later, Ashley plucked Kyla's pendant from the rubble. She pressed the gleaming emblem into Spencer Carlin's palm._

Arthur withdrew his fangs from Aiden's throat. The victimized vampire gasped in relief, but feared that it was already too late for him. He had never felt so drained before, not even after the most exhausting blood orgy. His entire body had been reduced to a dried husk, stripped of every last drop of vitality. His mouth was as dry as the Kalahari. His eyes were sunk deep into their sockets. Every breath produced a spasm of agony. His bloody clothes felt like sandpaper against his raw, dehydrated skin. An icy chill, infinitely more frigid than the blizzard raging outside, penetrated the very marrow of his bones. Aiden doubted if he could even stand under his own power anymore. Only the Elder's taloned pinions kept him upright.

Centuries of immortality passed before his eyes. Aiden had enjoyed many lifetimes of power and pleasure, but he was not yet ready to die. The prospect of eternal oblivion filled him with mortal dread. _Not now!_ he thought pitifully. _Not so soon!_

"Please," he croaked painfully. "I… can still assist you."

Bright red blood was smeared all around the Elder's jaws. A hint of a smile lifted the corners of his lips.

"You already have," Arthur said.

His wings snapped outward, tearing Aiden apart.


	7. Chapter Six

_Chapter Six_

Spencer couldn't believe Ashley planned to leave her behind again.

"If I can plead my case," Ashley insisted, "there's a chance we'll be granted sanctuary." She slipped her black trench coat back over her shoulders as she prepared to depart the safe house. "Right now you'd be killed on sight. I'm not prepared to risk that."

"So what, I'm supposed to just sit here and wait for you?" The blonde laid her guns down on a nearby counter. _No fucking way,_ she thought. The last thing she wanted to do was hang around the abandoned mine while Ashley endangered her life on their behalf… again. "Aiden may still have his men with him. You can't go alone."

Ashley looked into the blonde's eyes. "You're not as strong as you might think."

"What?" she blurted. Wasn't she a superpowerful hybrid now? Hell, she had almost held her own against Raife in hand-to-hand combat, and the formidable Elder was supposed to be one of the most powerful vampires ever. _What does she mean by that?_

Ashley stepped away from the well-stocked weapons racks. She crossed the floor to the refrigerator on the other side of the bunker. Pulling open a clear glass door, she removed a few packets of frozen cloned blood. The preserved fluid inside the translucent plastic bags was purplish red. Spencer had a horrible feeling she knew where this was going.

"You're unique, Spencer," she said. "There has never been a hybrid before. However ambivalent you may feel about it, the truth is that your power could be limitless. But you depend on blood. You need to feed. Without it, you'll be growing weaker by the second." She closed the door of the refrigerator. "Use the time for that."

She lobbed the packets of blood at her. Spencer caught them with both hands, then gazed down at the swollen bags. A printed label identified them as products of Ziodex Industries; she recalled Ashley telling her that Ziodex was fully owned by her coven. The frozen blood felt cold to the touch, like an ice pack.

As a doctor, she had handled blood bags before, of course, but this was different. The realization dawned on her that Ashley was deadly serious. She actually expected her to _drink_ the blood… like a vampire.

"Jesus Christ."

She held the blood in her hands, the frozen packets representing the end of her old life and the beginning of a strange, unknowable future. Even after everything she had gone through already, the prospect of drinking the blood struck her as some sort of monumental turning point. After this, there could be no denying what she had become.

"And what if I don't?" she asked her. "What if I can't?"

Ashley offered her no way out. "Normal food would be lethal. If you don't anticipate your cravings, you will attack humans." Her voice acquired a melancholy tone. "Believe me, you don't want that on your conscience."

Spencer had to wonder if Ashley was speaking from personal experience. According to her, modern vampires were forbidden from preying on innocent humans. Synthetic blood had been used as a substitute, until replaced by the cloned variety. Still, wasn't it possible that, sometime over the centuries, Ashley might have been forced to sample the real thing?

She didn't have the nerve to ask her.

"There really is no going back, Spencer. I'm sorry."

Spencer could tell that she meant it. Did she ever regret becoming a vampire herself, especially now that she knew the truth about her family's death? The blonde recalled that she wasn't the only person whose life had been turned upside down tonight.

"Look, I understand what you did, why you bit me back there in the tunnels. I'm grateful. You saved my life." She gave Ashley a wan smile. "I wasn't ready to die."

The vampire nodded. Although her expression remained guarded, Spencer somehow sensed that Ashley was relieved by her reaction. _Heck,_ she thought, _I was already a werewolf by then. What was one more bite between friends?_

"I don't know… everything's changed." She took a deep breath. "I probably just need a minute to make it fit in my head, you know? It's a lot to process all at once."

"If it's any help," she said quietly, "everything's changed for me, too."

"I know…."

Naked emotion hung in the air between them. Spencer stared into Ashley's bottomless brown eyes, uncertain what to do had been drawn to her since the first moment their eyes had met down in the Ferenciek Square subway station, before all this craziness had begun. Did she feel the same way about her? They had been so busy fighting to stay alive that they had barely had a chance to get to know each other more intimately. True, the brunette had kissed her once, but only to distract her long enough to handcuff her to that chair. Or had that been her only motive? Her lips still remembered the cool softness of Ashley's mouth. Her neck tingled where her fangs had pierced her skin. Her blood now flowed in Ashley's veins.

"Look, go," she told her. "I'll be here. You just make sure you come back."

Ashley walked past Spencer without a word, the tail of her long black coat flapping behind her. Spencer stood by silently as she left the safe house without a single backward glance.

_Same old story,_ she thought wryly. _Here I am, left holding the blood._


End file.
